An Act of Truth
by VelocityGirl1980
Summary: Settled in Cyprus, Ruth thinks her life is just about back on track. Until, that is, an excavation brings a ghost from her past rolling into town. Meanwhile, back in London, Harry spots an opportunity for revenge, and Lucas North, newly returned from Russia, struggles to pick up the pieces. A mission from Harry, with alongside his 'difficult' new boss, will change everything.
1. Uncovered

**Summary/Author's Note: **Finally settled in Cyprus, with a new job, a new home and a new future, Ruth's newly established world is shaken to the core when a face from the past appears out of the blue. When the past comes back to haunt her, she realises it could just be the opportunity she needs to clear her name and avenge herself against the man who almost destroyed her. Meanwhile, Lucas North has just returned to London after an eight year stint in a Russian prison cell. He struggles to piece together the wreckage of his former life, while learning to get along with a certain lady boss while sent a mission together.

AU. In my other fics, these couples (Ros/Lucas and Harry/Ruth) are already "an item". So, I want to go back in time and dream up a scenario where I can write them all being drawn gradually back together.

* * *

**Chapter One: Uncovered**

**Nicosia, Northern Cyprus **

The park had been built following the invasion of 1974. Battle scarred streets, derelict houses and the broken bodies of the fallen had given way to emerald lawns, irrigated by the city's waste water. Great tufts of Pampas Grass; lemon trees fattening with fruit and exotic plants Ruth couldn't name. It formed a living, pollinating, blossoming memorial to the places and the people Turkish tanks razed to the ground just over thirty years before. A place of peace and tranquillity, where the war machine once raged.

Ruth looked on, watching as City officials roped off the park. She, as well as any of the people standing around her at that moment, knew that you could cover up the past with whatever you wanted. But, you couldn't make it go away altogether. Once the ropes were up, large diggers, cumbersome as mechanical drunks, lumbered over the previously immaculate lawns she had been admiring just five minutes ago. The trees and Pampas Grass flattened, the turf torn from the earth. The exotic, nameless plants thrown aside like History's flotsam.

She looked about her, at the other people gathered in silence to watch as the excavation began, as though she expected them to protest. She hadn't expected this. The images in her head were of men in khaki shorts, with white handlebar moustaches, raking through the topsoil with a fine tooth comb. She thought that the past would be slowly revealed; first the dome of a skull, a perfect circle where the bullet extinguished life. Jutting, angular jawlines exposed, as the next layer of soil was delicately dusted away at the expert hands of the Archaeologists. Fingers probing the compacted earth, pushing through empty eye sockets, the windows to the soul smashed in for the final time. Then, the teeth. Teeth lovingly restored, gifting up their rich DNA cargo and, in time, the last piece of the jigsaw as faceless, nameless, human bones were restored to humanity, given back their identities. Telling their stories, after thirty long years buried beneath the façade of peace and prosperity.

Just six feet from the excavation site, Ruth reached down beside the bench she was sitting on to retrieve her handbag. Beside her, an elderly lady swathed in back shuddered as the digger's bucket gauged out another chunk of dirt dripping earth. The elderly woman's grip tightened on a dog-eared, black and white photograph held in her lap; Ruth hadn't noticed before, having been too immersed in the dig. The photograph showed a smiling girl of about nineteen, dark hair cascading down her shoulders, frozen in time; forever young. As Ruth looked, a teardrop splashed on the girl's face, magnifying her smile to the point of distortion.

Ruth tried to smile at the woman's bent head, but she did not stir. Her silent tears, still falling for her lost child even after all these years, so Ruth reached into her handbag. Inside, among the debris of lipsticks, ticket dockets and loose change, she dug out her pocket handkerchiefs and handed one to the elderly lady.

"It will be alright," Ruth told her. _'They'll find her,' _she thinks silently, but cannot bring herself to actually say. All the people there, holding similar pictures, maybe practical, but they still had hope. Hope that, even after all this time, their loved ones were merely trapped on the wrong side of the UN buffer zone. Ruth wasn't about to be the one to snuff that out.

The woman looked up at her, oddly grateful for this small act of compassion, as she took the hankie and used it to dry her tears off the daughter's photograph face. Mothers: they always out their children first.

Their brief moment of bonding was brought to an end as George appeared through the small crowds, beckoning her over. She went to him, after giving the old girl in black another brief smile.

"Hey," she greeted George, accepting a Styrofoam cup of steaming coffee from his outstretched hand. "Any joy?"

Unlike many of the others, George was not carrying a photograph of his lost loved ones; his father and uncle. He had simply slipped into the town hall, to scour the display boards where tiny mugshots of the missing were exhibited for the relatives. His expression clouded as he blew on his own hot coffee.

"Nothing," he replied, taking a delicate sip and wincing against the burn all the same. "As you would say: a needle in a haystack."

She met George just under a year ago, at the Hospital where she worked in Clerical and he was a Doctor. They went for lunch, then dinner, then the theatre. They swapped numbers, because they made each other happy. When they continued to make each other happy, they started staying around at each other's houses. Together, they wandered the streets of Nicosia, taking in the buildings and the views. Away from the dig site, the aroma of the orange blossom and lemon trees was heavy in the air. At times like these, Ruth felt like she lived in a foreign country. Reminding her of the distance she had travelled and the stark contrasts between Cyprus, and the country she had left behind barely two years before.

Once, George had asked her why they couldn't go back for a holiday. He wanted to meet her family, to see where she played as a child and where the mystery of her past life flourished in the open. What could she tell him? That she was legally dead? That she had exposed deadly corruption at the heart of the nation's security services? 'There is nothing and no one,' she answered bluntly, and left it that. Even as she had spoken the words 'no one', the memory of Harry Pearce flashed across her mind, unbidden and automatic. Silently, Harry slipped back out of her mind, leaving in his wake a sorrow she could never quite expunge.

Together, they slipped down a sheltered alleyway between two limestone buildings and perched themselves on a low wall near the coach station. Tourists thronged the streets, disembarking from buses, having been on a tour of the UN buffer zone that provided a no-man's land between the Turkish north and the Greek south. Their own coach back to Polis wasn't due for another twenty minutes, so Ruth listened out for English accents among the tourists swelling around the luggage compartment of the coaches. She never could break the habit of looking for little signs of home, even after two years of trying to convince herself that Cyprus was her home.

She picks up snatches of conversation.

"… well, Rita, we saw that nice café down the road. None of that foreign stuff in there…"

"… must be somewhere that sells proper tea…"

She laughed into her coffee. George turned to her, a frown furrowing his brow.

"What's funny?" he asked.

Ruth just smiled. "The English," she replied, affectionately.

He wouldn't understand the quirks of her people. Their dogged adherence to the familiar, their fight to the death to stay the same. Their endless, fruitless search for an England in the sun. George had asked her once, was it really that bad. She told him the truth; that the English sun was a tabloid newspaper. He had given her a most peculiar look; but his enquiries about possible holidays down memory lane grew less frequent.

She picked up another English voice.

"I'm on my way down there now," the man says, his accent clipped and proper and his voice low. "The dig began an hour ago, or so I'm told. But wait until I'm down there and I'll call you back. Don't make any decisions until I know what's happening."

She knew that voice, it was enough to make her heart beat faster. But the source of the voice was hidden among the throng of sight-seers. George noticed her trembling as she set her cup down on the wall.

"Ruth," he said her name, reaching out to steady her hand. "Is something the matter?"

She looked at him, as if surprised to see him still there.

"Just, wait here for five minutes," she replied. "There's something I need to check. I won't be long."

The crowds of tourists had begun to disperse, headed out towards the hotels and restaurants along the main streets. Ruth slipped in with them, her gaze darting about as she got the talking man back in her line of vision. Immediately, her old instincts kicked back in and let herself fall behind again. For the few seconds she saw him, she noted his height, his slim build. She frowned, kept her sharp eyes on the spot where the man had stood. She felt that she knew him, while at the same time, she knew she couldn't possibly be right. She gave herself a shake, turned around and returned to George.

"Ruth, where did you go?" he asked, as soon as she reappeared.

She smiled and failed to answer the question. "Come on," she said. "The coach home is here."

* * *

Lucas paused outside the supermarket to grapple with a shopping trolley. They're all chained up. What's the point of having them there if they're all chained up? He glanced over his shoulder at the young woman balancing a baby on her hip, clicking her tongue impatiently at him. She glowered a 'hurry up' at him just as her baby hit her in the face with his toy.

"Here love, do you need a pound coin?" she asked him, giving him a maddeningly sympathetic look over the child's head.

"Er," he replied, looking back at the trolley and noticing the slot for the coin for the first time. _'You have to pay to use a shopping trolley these days?_' he thinks to himself. "I'm sorry," he said, looking back at the woman and noticing the queue for the trolleys getting longer. "I've … been away … everything is different."

He felt the need to justify himself as he fished for the coin in his pocket. He felt the need to justify himself to everyone. Harry and that dreadful woman who seemed to follow him everywhere, these days. Even Malcolm. And now, the woman at the Supermarket, too. However, his acute embarrassment ended as the coin slotted into place and the trolley was finally released from captivity. He never thought he'd feel affinity with a shopping trolley.

He pushes the damn thing, struggling to keep it straight as the wheels all tried to roll independently of one another, and headed down the first aisle directly in front of him. Eight years of inflation, how much is that? Eight years of price hikes, but Malcolm has seen him right, courtesy of the service. They may be about to spit him out as damaged goods, but at least they'll see him right.

He shuts off thoughts of work, turned to the task at hand and lost himself in a fog of bewildering choice. That's the thing with being in prison: everyone made the choices for you. They told you what to eat, when to eat and how often. They told you when to sleep and when to wake up; when to go out in the exercise yard and when to fry your bollocks on the live wires. Everything was pre-ordained; everything was regimented and all you had to do was lie there and take it. He had believed that the only thing they couldn't control was his mind. He could lie awake at nights and torture himself with thoughts of all the things he would or could be doing, if he were a free man. But over the course of those eight long years, you slowly forgot how to make those choices, how to handle 'freedom'. You didn't know you were 'institutionalised' until you were released, and faced with all those stark choices.

Stark choices, like what breakfast cereal to buy. The options of overwhelming to him and, before long, he's methodically going through a process of elimination. Cornflakes, they don't taste of anything. He crossed them off the list, moved along and weighed up the pros and cons of each brand. His job was different. MI5: it was second nature and not even eight years inside could stamp that out of him. But for Harry… his heart sank again as the conversation ran through his mind. 'You're not ready!' Harry was adamant and it's no good trying to change his mind when he's in that sort of a mood. Being a spy: it's the only thing he can still do. Because, God knows, he couldn't even pick a brand of breakfast cereal anymore.

"Oh for God's sake, just get the bloody Cornflakes."

The woman's voice jolted him violently out of his own, one man self-pity party. An arm reached around him and grabbed the box and dumped it unceremoniously in his trolley. He whirled around and bit down on his tongue. _'But, oh shit, it's her; it's that awful woman with frost for knickers and a barbed razor for a tongue,' _he thought to himself, inwardly recoiling from her hard little eyes.

She stood back, arms folded and regarded him coolly. Calm and self-possessed; or still waters running deep?

"Harry wants to talk to you," she said.

The command to drop everything. He still recognised it when he saw it.

"Thank you … er…."

"Ros," she curtly reminded him.

"Thanks, Ros."

He watched her turn sharply around, to all intents and purposes lost in the special offers on display opposite the breakfast cereals. One neat nail trailing over the packets. She stops occasionally, pulls something off the shelf and tosses it into the trolley. "You'll be needing that," she muttered to herself as she did so. "Oh, and this and some of that, too. Ah yes, this is nice."

Lucas watched her aghast; too taken aback to actually stop her from doing his shopping for him. She seems to taken the task in hand herself. But, she hated him. She had made that clear from the moment they first met. She regarded him like something she'd accidentally trailed onto The Grid on the sole of her shoe. She stopped then, looked back at him and sighed impatiently.

"Chop, chop!" she beckoned, "Harry's waiting and you're clearly going to take your sweet arsed time, if left to your own devices."

He couldn't argue with that, so simply followed and let Ros make all the key decisions with regards to his week's groceries. Not that there was much to consider; it was only him, now. Elizaveta had gone, married someone else on the presumption of his death. But that didn't make it hurt any less. It didn't make the fact that he had been all but forgotten any more palatable. It didn't make unexpected shopping trips with the Ice Maiden any easier.

"Look Ros," he spoke up, still following her like a bored toddler down the aisles. "I don't know what the state of affairs was between you and Adam Carter-"

The reaction was understated, but undeniable. Her body stiffened and she whirled round brandishing a packet of lasagne sheets like a shield.

"And these," she cuts him off, raising her voice to a pitch just short of something only dogs could hear.

She blamed him. Lucas took her reaction as confirmation of that fear which had played on his mind since it happened. If she blamed him, did everyone else? Was that the real reason Harry was cutting him out of the action? He rushed to catch up with her as she strode towards the checkout.

"Look, Ros, listen," he pushed on, keen to get across his version of events. "I couldn't stop him getting in that car. There was nothing I could-"

"Get that till over there," she cut over him again, wresting the trolley from him and making a dash for the till before anyone else could get there.

Lucas watched her storm off in dismay. However, Harry had called and he must endure.

* * *

Harry adjusted the knot of his tie, loosening it before it choked him to death as he hastened towards the pods. He had hoped to find Ros and Lucas waiting for him, but clearly they were delayed. Only Jo, Ben and Connie were there, and none of them paid much in the way of attention to him. Just a friendly nod as he passed, or a small wave from Jo. But, at least, they were all safe for once.

He let himself into his office, poured a measure of whiskey and flopped down in his chair. The purpose of his little outing had been about getting information to hook Arkady Kachimov. But, what he got instead, was something so much better. He smiled as he opened his briefcase, removed the file his contacts in six had handed him and lovingly laid it out on the desk. He smoothed it over and flipped the cover over, revealing a black and white photograph of Oliver Mace. He's about to read on, but Ros knocked at his door, prematurely ending his enjoyment of the illicit activities of the disgraced former head of JIC. Behind Ros, he was relieved to see, came Lucas. Pensive and reluctant, but there all the same. He beamed at them both.

"Come in," he said, even though they already were. "Have a seat."

They settled themselves in front of his desk, both looking politely interested but saying nothing.

"Take a look at this file," he said, pushing it instinctively towards Ros. "Oliver Mace left the country three days ago, with the head of Turkish Intelligence. I want you both to work together to find out exactly what's going on and what he's up to."

Ros understood, all too well, what was going on as far as Harry was concerned. But Lucas frowned, clearly still in the dark as to exactly how much had changed.

"Oliver Mace?" he asked, looking from Harry to Ros. "But he's the head of –"

"Not any more, he isn't!" Ros retorted, cutting him off but with her face still buried in the file. She was grinning broadly when she looked up again. "Am I bringing him?" she jerked her head towards Lucas.

"Yes," he replied, silently adding '_look after him'_.

The news didn't dampen her enthusiasm. She merely stood up, file still in hand. "I'll get right on it," she assured him.

Lucas, however, stayed behind as Ros left. Only an hour ago, he had regarded himself as spent. Chewed up and spat out of the service. Now, he looked across the desk at Harry, firing unspoken questions at him.

"I've been thinking," said Harry, leaning forwards in his seat. "About what you said this morning. About wanting to come back."

"And?" asked Lucas, suddenly alert and hopeful.

"And although it flies in the face of my overwhelming common sense," he states. "I'm willing to let you come back now, on these conditions."

"Name them," Lucas cut in.

"No heroics. If you want to stop, then just say so. There's no shame in asking for help, Lucas. If it gets too much, come straight back to me and I'll fix it for you. If I, or Ros, think things are getting too much, then we have the right to pull you out. Is that understood?"

Lucas was practically bouncing, now. He leaned forwards to shake Harry's hand. "Yes!" he replied. "Yes, understood. Completely."

Against his better judgement it may be, but the other man's boyish enthusiasm was undeniably infectious. Besides, if he was going to finally stick the knife into Oliver Mace, he'd need all hands on deck. He dismissed Lucas with the instruction to work alongside Ros and obey every one of her commands, no matter how capricious, or face a spell in the psych tank. The dire warning did little to dent his new found optimism, though.

Harry was happy. Spreading good news and cheer to his newly returned Case Officer, and wreaking havoc on an old enemy. And it wasn't even four o clock yet. He remembered the whiskey he had allowed himself just five minutes before, still undrunk. It felt like finding a twenty pound note down the back of the sofa.


	2. Holiday in the Sun

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, I really appreciate the support. Thank you.

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**Chapter Two: Holiday in the Sun**

Ros eased off the accelerator as she brought her car up Chapel Street, slowing to a crawl as she pulled over on to Belgrave Square. Faux Victorian streetlamps lit up the immaculate, whitewashed terraces to her left: the Italian Culture Centre, the French Embassy and, in the middle, the Turkish Embassy. She made a note of its precise location, then carried on further down, following the sweep of the road.

Opposite the Embassies, just beyond the reach of the streetlamps, Belgrave Park was in darkness. Her gaze lingered over the wrought iron perimeter fence, watching for signs of movement among the trees and bushes. She saw nothing, tutted impatiently as she returned her full attention to the road ahead and had to slam on the breaks as Lucas materialised seemingly from thin air right in front of her.

"Idiot!" she snapped, opening the car door and giving it a hard shove so it collided with him as he went to get in beside her.

Lucas dodged around the door and got in with a smile on his face. She had begun to wonder whether he enjoyed winding her up; or whether he was still high on happiness at being allowed back into the service, earlier that afternoon.

"You really need to watch the road," he cautioned her, earning himself a withering glare of indignation in response. She had been looking for him; hidden in the bushes opposite the Turkish Embassy as he had tried to scout out ways inside.

"I would have let the Police find you, but you know what they do with strange men they find lurking in the bushes at nights," she condescended to explain. "I thought you might have seen enough of the inside of gaol cells for this lifetime."

That wiped the smirk off his face. But, it gave her no joy; just grim satisfaction that she had put him back in his place. As the car reached the traffic island at the end of Belgrave Road, she stopped fully, parking in a spot reserved for daytime maintenance vehicles and shut the engine off. Beside her, in the passenger seat, Lucas continued looking straight ahead, anywhere other than at her.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" she asked, softening her tone considerably.

Lucas looked back at her through eyes stained red from lack of sleep. "I can answer that question until I'm blue in the face," he replied. "But how can I prove it unless you give me a chance to actually do my job?"

Clearly, Harry had as much faith in Lucas's abilities as Lucas himself did. With that as her key guiding factor, she nodded in agreement. But she could not banish her shadowed doubts altogether. "Doubting your readiness is not the same thing as doubting your abilities, Lucas," she pointed out, careful to measure her tone lest it should sound like another dig. "But anyway, did you find a way in?"

He'd been discreetly checking the Embassy's weak points for the last hour. Unfortunately, the building was set in the middle of a long terrace, sandwiched between the French and Syrian Embassies. Then, there was the blanket CCTV coverage of the area. If Malcolm knocked all the cameras out, it would raise the suspicions of the Met; the last thing they needed was the Police catching them out. The difficulties were registered in Lucas's pained expression.

"Round the back, a door for the cleaners is the most vulnerable," he explained. "We've got the lock picker. The alarm system is in there and we can get Malcolm to break the codes for us before we even go in."

Ros sighed, resenting having to go sneaking around like a thief. "Very well," she replied, resigned to her fate for the evening.

She revved the engine and pulled away from the parking space, headed towards the back of the terraced buildings. Lucas, meanwhile, recovered from his earlier rebuke and struck up conversation. Thus far, he'd been informed of what he needed to know: that Oliver Mace had left the country with the head of Turkish Intelligence for reasons unknown. Now, he was pushing for more.

"Mace was always a ruthless bastard," he remarked. "But what's he done that merits all this? How did he end up getting the boot?"

Ros smiled, a small fact not lost on Lucas. "Now, there's a story," she drily remarked, eyes darting left as she pulled in to the small backstreet that led behind the Embassy. Once she had parked, she in her seat to face Lucas. "A couple of years ago – not long after I joined Five, in all honesty – Mace framed Harry's Analyst for murder. He tried to make it look like she was part of a terrorist cell called 'Acts of Truth', responsible for several killings and a cover up at the same time. We brought down Mace because of it; but it was too late for the Analyst."

Skirting perilously close to revealing details of Harry's private life, Ros stuck to vagaries rather than expose Harry's own heartbreak. It wasn't her place to do so, regardless of the esteem in which Harry clearly held Lucas.

Lucas frowned at her. "This isn't Connie we're talking about, so what happened to the Analyst?"

"Gone," she replied, matter-of-factly. "On the run, but we found a body to palm off as hers for the records."

For a second, his eyes shone in the moonlight that filtered into the car. "So, Harry's sticking the knife into Mace for the sake of the Analyst? What was his name?" He had forgotten the name of the man who was there before he went to Russia.

Ros's brow furrowed. "Her name was Ruth," she pointedly corrected him. "And yes, so stop wasting time and get a move on. Harry wants results."

They came prepared, already clothed in black; as they anticipated a break-in, they merely completed their ensemble with black gloves and shoe coverings. Lucas got on the phone to Malcolm, waiting for them on the Grid, to get to work on the alarms inside the embassy, while Ros got down to business with the lock pick. Once they were in, and the alarms disabled, they found their way to the main building, relying on the light of their own small torches. The thin beams of light revealed a wide, sweeping staircase that led up to the first floor, where the Ambassador's offices were located. Ros led the way, with Lucas following close behind, flashing his light in the direction they just came from, ensuring they hadn't missed anything interesting.

Wary of listening devices and bugs left by third party agencies, they kept verbal communication to a bare minimum, relying on hand signs and body language instead. In the silence, the empty Embassy echoed hollow; desks stood abandoned in deserted offices, a ghost town writ small. Just the scattered papers on desks, the unemptied waste paper bins and askew chairs betrayed the life that filled the offices by day. Ros and Lucas continued their sweep of the suspended animation inside, looking out for anything of interest. They passed over the junior and clerical desks, they would deal with nothing more arduous than visa applications. Instead, they headed towards the Ambassador himself.

They found the door understandably locked. Ros dropped to her haunches, fiddled with the lock for a second until she heard a click, and the door swung open almost of its own volition. They flashed each other a grin; Lucas stepped aside and motioned for her to lead the way inside. Inside, a backlit tropical fish tank gurgled, causing an ethereal, almost phosphorescent blue glow in the corner. For a second, Ros watched the slack-jawed fish butting the tank walls, as though they were trying to break out. Behind the desk, a neatly arranged Turkish flag was hung on the wall above the imposing, mahogany desk.

Lucas descended on the desk, carefully rifling through the papers stacked in the organiser with one hand, keeping the torch steady with the other. Ros assisted by going through the drawers, careful to leave everything exactly as she found it. She paused, kneeling on the floor while she shone her torch along the walls. All she picked up at first were black and white photographs of old Istanbul. Then, she beamed on a safe with an electronic lock. She produced a plastic swipe card from her back pocket and used it in the slot beside the safe. A series of digits flashed up on the VDU, incomprehensible at first. But numbers eventually froze as the software embedded in the magnetic strip broke the code. After two minutes of a blurry combinations, they had access.

Seeing that Ros had everything under control there, Lucas turned his attention to fitting a bug inside the telephone. Another would be implanted in the walls themselves. While Lucas busied himself with that, Ros looked through the manila files stacked inside the safe. The first two contained diplomatic dispatches, meant for the Turkish Government in Ankara. Oliver Mace's name was not mentioned anywhere. But the second file contained a copy of a visa issued to Mace under a false name: Owen Mason. Details were sparse. Under the section for "reasons for travel" it merely stated: "diplomatic negotiations" and that was it. She photographed the documents before replacing them, but it was a small return for the effort she and Lucas had invested.

"Anything?" she whispered to Lucas as she passed him.

Lucas shrugged. "Nothing," he confirmed.

With phone taps already in place and the eye in the wall, they couldn't do much more. They had confirmation of Mace's location, but infuriatingly little information on what he was doing there. Ros would fail to be impressed if she had broken into the Embassy building of a friendly nation for nothing so, with sagging expectations, she motioned for Lucas to follow her back outside, before Harry's vendetta got them both arrested.

* * *

Ruth turned restlessly on one side, inadvertently pulling the blanket off a sleeping George as she did so. Outside, the sun was set to rise; peering, as it was, over the crest of the hills outside her apartment. She had lain like that all night, going over the events of the previous day repeatedly. It was Mace she saw. But was it? She had snatched a fleeting, sidelong glance at a man who resembled Mace, and who sounded like Mace. Now, she felt as though she were being haunted by the man. She tried to convince herself that she was seeing things. That her mind was still troubled by the events of the Cotterdam Scandal, and she had simply imagined the man.

These thoughts were almost always countered by the fact that, fleeting as her sighting was, it still happened. Unable to lie there, inactive and with her imagination running riot, she slipped out of bed and gave George the coverlet back before padding through her apartment, to where her computer sat in the living room. Her Mace-like man was brought here by the excavation in Nicosia, so the first websites she tried were the news sites. She clicked through a few image galleries, studying the features of every pale skinned man present. However, she was not fooling herself. If Mace was there, then he would be just as camera shy as he always was. So, she shut down the windows currently opened on the screen and leaned back in her chair.

The silence was absolute; only the first rays of dawn permeated the darkness, making it curl at the edges. She looked over her shoulder, as if someone might be sneaking up on her before she turned back to the computer. She enjoyed her simple life in Cyprus, with its regularity and reassuring monotony. But sometimes, in the dead of night, she would think back on her days in MI5 and, somewhere deep inside her, the need for a thrill of danger would make its presence felt. Now, here was the excuse she needed.

Despite her fears, she smiled as she bounced her IP Address around several different countries, through several different service providers all over the world. Then, she reached into her top drawer and rummaged for an old flash drive she still had from home. Once in, with software booted, she hacked the Government system with ease. Her only trouble was that she didn't exactly know what she was looking for. She began with going through Government contacts in the British Intelligence Services.

Jools Siviter popped up first and Ruth rolled her eyes at the man she remembered as a pompous arse. As she clicked through the names and faces, she became aware of one other man who was also likely to be on there. Was he likely to be there? Or did she simply yearn for him to be there? But all the same, there he was. Harry Pearce, the face she had only seen in her half-remembered dreams, stared out at her from the computer screen. Her heartbeat quickened, her stomach clenched as she saw him, Oliver Mace faded to the background as she almost forgot why she was hacking the Greek Government's systems in the first place. Her finger froze on the 'next' button, unable to bring herself to move on without reading over the sparse details on Harry's file. She clocked the title, though. 'Sir' Harry Pearce. She smiled at a sad surge of pride in her former boss swept her up.

"Ruth."

She had been lost in her work; hadn't heard George approaching her. She spun round in her seat, saw him standing in the doorway, leaning against the wooden frame. Dishevelled and still cumbersome with sleep, he was squinting at her.

"You frightened me," she laughed, feeling her heart rate come down a little.

Just to be safe, she swiftly ended her foray back into the world of espionage by accidently on purpose knocking the power off on her PC and router.

"I couldn't sleep, so I booked two more coach tickets to Nicosia," she lied fluently, too. But, the tickets were another of her intentions. Before he can probe any deeper into what she was doing up so early, she got up and offered to make coffee.

The breakfast bar led out onto the patio where, during the long summer months, they could watch the break of dawn outside. Just a precious hour before the nearby beach began to swarm with tourists and they themselves had to go to work. Today, however, they remained in doors as Ruth busied herself with coffee and toast.

"You don't mind going back so soon?" he asked, seating himself at the bar.

"Of course not!" she answered. "And, in any case, there's something that I need to double check, as well."

She had vowed never to tell George of what she did for a living, while she lived in England. He didn't need to know, and nor could she ever quite find the words to say. As for Harry, he was locked away in a fenced off part of her heart where no one else was allowed to trespass. But, as she spoke to George, it occurred to her that he could hold some of the answers that would lead her to the answers she sought, as well as bringing her closer to his own story, of what's led him to look for lost loved ones in a pit miles from home.

"How do you feel about the invasion now?" she asked, pouring the percolated coffee out.

He raised a brow, suppressed a laugh. "I was six when it happened," he reminded her. "The only memories I have are of my mother and sisters, throwing what clothes that came to hand in a plastic bag and us running for the car. My father and uncle stayed behind to help resist the Turks. We never saw them again and we never found out what happened to them."

George dropped his gaze, thanked her quietly for the coffee. Unaccustomed to soul bearing at five am, he paused to gather his own personal feelings now that thirty years and more had passed. He gestured expansively towards the patio doors.

"You can go out there and ask anyone here, my age and over, what their memories are and our stories will be remarkably similar," he pointed out. "Whether Greek or Turk, because we lived side by side until the invasion happened, we all lost someone that could never be replaced. Thousands are missing, presumed dead, and there thousands more who, like me and my sisters, have no answers; who've been searching for their loved ones ever since. But the older ones remember what life was like before '74; when Greeks and Turks cohabited in peace. Why can't we go back to that?"

It was the sad lament in all societies pulled apart by war and disorder. The little people on the ground, eternally unaware that their societies were being pushed around a giant chessboard. They can't go back to the way it was before, because more powerful nations decreed it, because they feared the alternatives. But even Ruth was staggered to think why the Turkish invasion of Cyprus had happened.

"You may want to live in peace with the Turks, George," Ruth said. "But, does everyone? Is there still animosity?" What she meant was, anyone who Oliver Mace would attach himself to, for whatever nefarious reasons he had.

"Naturally," he answered. "But it's not like Northern Ireland, with bands of paramilitaries fighting a dirty war. Sometimes, there will be people who try to stir the pot. To be fair, it's people on both sides who do it."

Mace certainly knew how to stir the pot. But with no organisations to attach himself to, if he was the one she had seen, she could only surmise that he still had friends in high places. Was he cosying up to the Turks, or the Greeks?

She pushed her chair back, away from the bar. "I'm just going to confirm those tickets," she said, excusing herself to go back to the computer.

She booked for the next day, leaving her another evening to 'research' her targets before travelling all that way again. If she fully deployed her skills, she could even arrange for George to be busy, leaving her completely free for the evening.

* * *

Harry waited until Lucas and Ros were seated until he closed the door of his office behind them. Then, he remained standing while he awaiting their report.

"We found his visa," Ros said, tentatively. "Issued under the name 'Owen Mason', all we know is that he travelled to Turkey for diplomatic negotiations. There was nothing else there, Harry."

Lucas was watching him intently. "It doesn't sound legit though, Harry."

Harry almost laughed. "Then why the false name?" he asked, pacing over to his desk but still too agitated to sit. "Mace has no diplomatic role to play, so what's he doing there?"

Nothing added up. The Government itself had issued a statement saying that Mace's own downfall spelled the end of 'dark days' for the security services. Now, he was globe-trotting once again in the Government's name. And what of Turkey? They were a friendly nation, but with some questionable links. Harry mulled it all over, oblivious to Ros and Lucas looking at him as if he were going mad.

Ros's expression softened, her gaze flickering between Harry and Lucas as though she wanted to speak openly but for Lucas's presence. "Harry, I know the full history between Mace and you," she said, keeping the terminology nice and neutral. "I know how much you want there to be … something amiss with all this-"

"You think I'm scraping the barrel of a personal vendetta," he cut her off, but finished the sentence for her.

His outburst was followed by a silence that made even Ros look abashed. Lucas, however, merely looked confused; like he'd walked into the room in the middle of a joke and only caught the punch line. Even if the whole thing was repeated to him now, he would still have lost the all important context. However, he had been given a mission at a time when he thought he was about to be put out to grass. He had seized upon it like a lifeline, one golden opportunity to prove himself again. He wasn't about to give up without a fight.

"What if Harry's right, and Mace could even be working against the interests of Her Majesty's Government," he chipped in. "With the intelligence he has, he could be handing the Turkish Government all our national secrets on a gold plate. I say we keep digging, if only on the off-chance that he has turned traitor."

Beside him, Ros rolled her eyes. "And what about our friends in the FSB?" she asked, completely about turning the conversation. "Have you forgotten about Kachimov? He was responsible for the death of Adam Carter. That is, real death. Not the type of death one can come back from in another country, with a new name."

Harry bit down on the flare of irritation that her interjection inspired. "No, I have not," he replied, keeping his tone casual. There were only so many vendettas he could handle in a day. "But as Lucas said-"

What Lucas said was not repeated, as the door to Harry's office was flung open and Malcolm interrupted, looking as if he had struck gold. Harry couldn't even get in his customary barb about knocking before Malcolm handed him some printouts.

"Oliver Mace isn't in Turkey," he said, breathless. "He's in Cyprus with the head of Turkish Intelligence. But, he's also been recorded as having cross from Turkish Cyprus into Greek Cyprus, alone. He crossed the buffer zone under his alias not two days ago."

Harry smiled again, his irritation at the interruption melting away fast. "Excellent Malcolm," he said, finally relaxing enough to sit down behind his desk to read the print outs. "But what the hell is he up to?"

"Please don't tell me you want us to go ferreting around the Greek Embassy next?" Ros groaned, turning from Malcolm to Harry.

Harry glanced up at her from over the papers. "No, he's definitely up to something with the Turks," he mused aloud, before turning to Malcolm again. "See if you can find out what hotel he's in, where he's going and who he's speaking to-" he broke off, looking back to Ros and Lucas – "meanwhile, I think you both could do with a holiday in the sun."

Malcolm vacated the office just as Ros's arm dropped limp at her side. She looked aghast, where Lucas merely looked pleasantly surprised. "Harry, you can't be serious?" she retorted.

"How else are we supposed to find out what Mace is up to?" Lucas countered, looking sharply at her.

Harry cut in before either of them could descend into squabbling. "Ros is right, Lucas," he pointed out, careful to placate his new Section Head. "But I want you both to be prepared for it. I suggest we find out what we can about Mace's activities before hand and, if need be, set a tail on him out in Cyprus if the need arises. And I suspect it will."

Understanding themselves to be dismissed, both Ros and Lucas got to their feet to get back to studying the Mace files. It was a neat concession to Ros's indignation, and it bought them more time to get their facts straight. Harry sat back, watching them both disappear to their stations on the Grid, satisfied that both of them – Ros in her grief for Adam Carter, and Lucas, still fragile and traumatised from Russia – were once again hitting their stride.


	3. Dead Man's Shoes

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. Thank you. The usual disclaimers apply and I own none of this. In answer to one of my guest reviewers, this is set at the start of season seven (so an alternative to that).

**_Just a quick note on Nicosia, too: Nicosia is a divided capital (much like Berlin before the wall came down). The north is governed by Turkey and the south is governed by the Greeks, hence why it's spoken of as if it were two different countries._**

* * *

**Chapter Three: Dead Man's Shoes**

"Mister Asani will be with you shortly."

At the sound of the woman's heavily accented voice, Oliver Mace turned abruptly from the painting he had been studying. He nodded a gesture of thanks, before cutting off any further prospect of chatter by turning back to the canvass. Its garish colours jarred with the stained cedar panelled walls of the dimly lit interior. He hurriedly mopped his brow with an old handkerchief before his host arrived and quickly stuffed it back in his breast pocket, just as the door behind the reception desk opened once again.

"Mister Mace," Devran Asani stepped into the reception, hand extended towards his guest already. "Good to see you again, come this way if you will."

Mace followed Asani through the door he'd just emerged from, down a passageway and into a private office. As they settled themselves on either sides of the desk, a smartly dressed woman appeared, serving them both Turkish apple tea in small crystal glasses before exiting as discreetly as she entered. With courtesies done, the two men went straight to business, with Mace picking his words carefully.

"You understand, don't you, that the Greeks have organised and funded the excavation of Southern Nicosia, and there's not an awful lot I can do to make them stop it. It is their territory," he said. "I'm as sorry as you are about the timing, it is unfortunate-"

"No, Oliver, it's catastrophic for us," Asani cut over him, leaning forwards across the desk to emphasise the point. "The Greeks have only done this to try and make us look like genocidal warmongers; to turn all of Europe against us and destroy our chances of joining the EU."

Oliver suppressed the sigh of exasperation, trained his expression to remain utterly neutral and took a deep breath. "Forgive my say so, Devran, but you don't understand how the EU works," he countered. "If you allow this excavation to go ahead, it will look like you're willing and able to confront your past and make amends. It is a gesture, Devran. Get it out of your head that you're losing face and accept that this could be to your advantage."

He couldn't understand the mentality, himself. Whoever was buried under the park in south Nicosia, they weren't going to be doing any talking; they weren't going to be revealing any deeply held secrets of the Turkish invasion. Unless…

"Unless there's something you're not telling me," he pointedly hinted.

Asani leaned back in his seat, fiddling with a fountain pen as he tried to distract himself. "The Turkish are planning to take back the south," he admitted. "My concern is not losing face. My concern is that this could lead to a rise in nationalism, another outbreak of hostilities between Greeks and Turks in the whole of Cyprus. I, personally, do not feel victimised by the dig. But my people will."

The corner of Mace's lip twitched into a half-smile, quickly suppressed before returning to placid neutrality. "Do you have intel on that?" he asked.

Asani nodded. For the first time in their acquaintance, he showed his forty-five years. "I have assets in various groups," he clarified. "I have assets in a Greek organisation calling itself Golden Dawn. They're all waiting to feed off each other. At least, I can watch them much more closely here than I could in London."

Mace sips the last of his apple tea, momentarily lost in thought. "You know the Greek economy's about to go completely tits up, don't you? It's a false dawn they're heading for, never bloody well mind a golden one."

Devran Asani, head of Intelligence, let the fountain pen he was playing with fall to the desk as he returned Mace's look. "Is it really that bad?" he asked, dark brow raised.

Mace snorted. "They're spending other people's money hand over fist," he pointed out with a shrug. "What do you think will happen?" he asked, but the question was purely rhetorical.

* * *

It was late – almost ten in the morning – by the time Ros woke up. Or rather, by the time she regained consciousness. Her head felt thick and fogged by the wine she knocked back the night before. She found herself surrounded by the wreckage of the hotel room. Cautiously, she set one bare foot down on the carpet, between two large splinters of mirror. Seven years bad luck, for that one. Normally, she was not prone to such emotional incontinence, but when she did indulge, she liked to make it one to remember. But, her grief for Adam could find no voice, even if she had the will to use it. It was something physical; that needed to be expelled through force, not words, not grief counsellors.

She walked three steps to the foot of the bed before she realised she was completely naked. It wasn't that she cared, it was more that she didn't want to inadvertently fall and do even more damage to herself. So she sat at the end of the bed, leaning down to extricate a dressing gown from underneath an over-turned table. Wrapping it round her shoulders, she surveyed the scene before her sadly.

"Rock n' roll," she numbly remarked to herself.

Once dressed, she spent an hour returning the hotel room to a semblance of normality. Or at least, so that it looked as if it was an accident. Like she stepped through the door, tripped over the table, knocking it over before landing on the mirror, smashing it to the ground and accidentally trashing the rest of the room as she flailed about. People could be ever so clumsy, and she didn't really care if she got lumped in with them.

By eleven thirty, she was dressed and out of the door. By the time the cleaners came around, she would ensure she was well away from the scene, all the same. She paused by the front door of her suite and straightened out her jacket, then picked up her case file. Mentally, a line was drawn under last night's emotional shit storm – it was done, in the past. Harry had made her Section Head, leaving her with the slightly uncomfortable feeling of having stepped into dead man's shoes. Methodically, she shelved all the feelings of unease, the insecurities and doubts. She eased herself back into her professional persona, and swept out of the door.

* * *

Even though Lucas expected it, the buzzer managed to catch him by surprise. It was midday and he should have known that Ros wouldn't have been as much as a second late. He splashed another handful of cold water over his face, an attempt to freshen up after another night spent tracking the cracks in the ceiling of his safe house. He buried his face in a nearby towel, patting himself dry and checking his reflection one more time. Impeccably clean shaven, shirt neatly pressed and not a hair out of place. Only the eyes betrayed his lack of sleep, lined red against the dark circles beneath, still holding the residual memory of his nightmares.

The buzzer sounded again. Sharp and impatient, just like her. He tossed the towel over the side of the bath and hurried to the door. She was there, smartly dressed and blonde hair swept back into a neat pony tail. They regarded each other in silence for a moment, before Ros simply nudged him to one side and stepped around him.

"Come on in," he belatedly invited, not quite keeping the facetious tone from his voice.

"Thanks," she called, casually, from over her shoulder as she rounded the corner, into Lucas's living room. "Mine's a coffee, black, no sugar," she added as he heard her flopping into one of his old, second hand armchairs.

"Sure," he murmured, shutting the front door and heading towards his small kitchen area. "Make yourself at home."

While the kettle boiled, he watched her through the hatch. She was already studying the file on Mace, seeing what Malcolm and Connie had added to it since they last looked. Since then, phone calls had been recorded, letters intercepted and copied before being re-directed and even one dead drop from an asset within the Ministry had been collected. Ros's expression was impossible to read, but then, she was an impossible woman. Whether what was inside that file was enough to convince her that this really did warrant investigation, Lucas couldn't tell. But, he resisted the urge to lace her coffee with salt and instead, made himself a cup of tea and even extended his hospitality to some chocolate digestives laid out on a side plate. It was worth a try, if only to sweeten her up, if that were possible.

He carried the two cups with the plate balanced precariously on the underside of his wrists. Looking, catching sight of his circus worthy balancing act, Ros was quick on her feet to help him.

"Here, let me," she said, lifting the plate and placing it on the small, uneven coffee table in the living room. "Chocolate biscuits, too! You're spoiling me."

He smiled, acknowledging the banter, but made no reply as he settled himself in the armchair opposite the one she was in. One wrong word could illicit a death glare and, at that hour, he wasn't ready to run the risk of joining in. At least, until he got to know her better, if that day ever came.

For a moment, Ros seemed content to go over the file, occasionally passing something over to him to check for himself. Once he had read everything through carefully, he placed it face up on the coffee table. After another ten minutes, Ros stopped and looked at him thoughtfully. "Lucas, tell me honestly," she said, keeping her tone even. "Do you really think there's enough here to warrant all this attention?"

"I know Harry, he wouldn't be doing all this simply to score a point," he replied. "And if Mace is only in Cyprus for a bit sun, sea and sex then why's he there with the head of Turkish Intelligence? Looks, he's crossed the border in to the south, he's been talking to assets. Why? He has no formal role within any of the security services and he has no business being there, at all. Harry's right; he's up to something."

Ros sighed as she dropped her head into her hands. For the first time, Lucas noticed how her own tiredness seemed to match his own. There was a livid bruise on one wrists, exposed as the cuff of her jacket lowered as she kneaded her eyes. Another small cut, fresh and painful looking, was just visible on her other hand. If it had been anyone else, he would have asked if she needed assistance with it. Instead, when she returned to the subject at hand, he simply pretended he had not been looking at all.

"I know you're right," she said, leaning back in her chair and shrugging in a gesture of defeat. "I loathe questioning Harry's judgement like this, but all we've got to go on is a few phone calls, a visa issued under a false name and some dodgy meetings. If we get to Cyprus, how're we going to keep tabs on Mace? I mean, how do find out what he's been up to?"

"Intercept his Assets," Lucas replied, offering the simplest solution. "If they're talking to him, then they'll talk to us. If Mace is really in deep disgrace with the service, then maybe Six will help us out – make it a joint Op." It made sense, seeing as Six should have been the ones handling it in the first place. But, as Ros had already pointed out, Harry did have an old score to settle. "There's one thing that worries me, more than anything else," he said, looking over at Ros.

"Which is?" she asked, prompting him to elaborate.

Lucas paused as he tried to word his concerns without sounding delicate, or damaged by his last foreign outing. But, there was no way he could get around the fact that his fear was genuine, bringing him out in a cold sweat whenever he thought about it. When he remained silent for just a little too long, Ros prompted him again, but not unkindly.

"Lucas, what is it?" she asked, softening visibly before him.

"Look, I'm not scared, or anything," he said, well aware he was protesting too much, "but I want to be clear on how we're staying in touch with The Grid. If anything changes, or if we become …"

"Compromised," she finished the sentence for him, but again, her tone was gentle, guiding him rather than acerbic impatience to hurry him. "It won't be like Russia, Lucas. Comms will be open at all times; Harry and the rest of team, Malcolm and Connie, they'll all be in constant touch. Given all that Harry went through to get you back, he would rather die than let anything like that happen again."

Lucas's heart leapt to his throat. "He did?"

"Yes, he sweated blood to get you back," she replied, firmly and without hesitation. "Whoever betrayed you, it wasn't him. Okay?"

He raised a wan smile. "Oh, I know that," he retorted, trying to force a laugh to make it sound preposterous. But, the truth is – and given Ros's ability to almost see through people, she probably already knew full well – that it had crossed his mind on more than one occasion. After eight years in solitary, you question everything and everyone.

"Anyway, it won't be like Russia; we'll be in Cyprus," she breezily added. "You'll be closer to the beach and you won't be freezing your bollocks off morning, noon and night. And if you're really lucky, you'll have the God ordained pleasure of being handcuffed to the same radiator as me for the next eight years." She grinned impishly, lighting up her whole face.

Lucas laughed, genuine and liberating laughter as the kid gloves fell from her hands, at last. "Oh well if that's the case," he replied. "Harry and his recue parties can get stuffed. We'll grow old together, sharing that radiator for all eternity."

She snorted with laughter just as she tried to drain her coffee cup, accidentally choking on it. "Never mind that fine romance," she choked, "come into town and get some lunch with me. Then we go back to Thames House and look at the evidence again."

He had barely eaten since waking up that morning, just a hastily grabbed slice of toast that had gone cold while he shaved. Ros's mention of lunch brought home just how hungry he was. Besides, a relaxed Ros could, it seemed, be pretty funny company. That, in turn, made him feel a few stone lighter and a few years younger as he grabbed his coat and fetched his car keys and wallet.

* * *

It was getting late by the time Ruth made her breakthrough. She glanced up at the clock on her wall informing her that it was inching towards midnight. But she had finally made progress as she located a visa, issued to a man who looked just like Oliver Mace, but using the name Owen Mason. She would have recognised him anywhere, from any distance. The downside was, the visa itself told her nothing. She took a screenshot, rather than printing the page, and saved it to her old flash drive before exiting the Turkish Government's database altogether.

When that was done, she realised she felt eerily calm. She disconnected her PC from the router, shut it down and poured herself another glass of wine before taking a walk out onto the veranda of her apartment. The sound of the restless ocean, waves crashing into more waves, drifted uphill from the low lying beach nearby. The full moon shone high, but provided little by way of light. So, she listened to the sound of the waves as she sipped her wine, feeling the tension drain from her shoulders as the tide ebbed in the darkness. Now that she knew, she could relax. Uncertainty never helped anyone.

It wasn't particularly cold, even at that hour. So Ruth sat down, dressed only in a camisole and pyjama bottoms as she pondered the return of such a ghost from her past. Mace couldn't possibly know she was there; and even if he did, what could he do? She was dead, at least legally. But nevertheless, when she returned to Nicosia, she knew she would have to tread carefully. She shuddered at the thought, but she knew she would have to start using an alias again. She resumed using her real name in Polis, simply because life was so ordinary, yet as different to her life in England as night is to day time.

Having allowed herself the luxury of a five minute break, she returned to the kitchen of her apartment and picked up her mobile phone. On the counter was a notepad containing a list of phone numbers, compiled that day while still at work. All the major hotels in Nicosia, along with their star rating. She began with the five stars, quite unable to imagine Mace settling for anything less.

"Oh hello, my name's Henrietta Mason and I'm looking for my husband, Owen," she said, as soon as she got answer. "I've been stuck in Polis and haven't been able to contact him all day … yes, I know it's late… Oh, you mean there's no one there of that name? I must have the wrong number; ever so sorry."

It was a mantra she repeated several times before she finally hit home. She circled the name of his hotel on the pad, and drew a big tick sign next to it.

"It's rather late, madam, are you sure you would like to be put through?" the apologetically voiced receptionist said.

"Ruth?"

Just at that moment, George appeared in the archway between the living room and kitchen. Hastily, Ruth made her excuses to get off the phone. "Sorry for disturbing you, I won't bother with a message, either. I'll just call tomorrow. Thanks for your help!"

Without another word, she hung up and switched off the phone altogether. "Just booking a hotel for when we're in Nicosia," she lied as she swept the notepad from the table, lest he should come to expect a five star affair. "Might as well make a weekend of it."

George smiled, evidently pleased. "Great idea," he replied, wrapping his arms around her neck and nuzzling her cheek. "Sophie wants to come, though."

"Oh, no!" Ruth groaned, not bothering to mask her aversion to the idea. "Look, it's not that I don't like your sister, but …" her words trailed off, but her brain finished the sentence for her: 'but I really don't like your sister.'

George was an only son, raised by his mother and elder sisters. A golden boy who could do no wrong. A devoted family man, until Ruth came and stole him away. For his part, George screwed his eyes shut in a grimace of actual pain.

"I know, I know," he tried to sound reconciliatory. "But ever since her husband left her and Nico, she's not been well, and … and…"

"And she's always bloody ill," Ruth cut over his stammering excuses for Sophia, the over-protective sister of Satan. "There'll be nothing there for Nico to do all day."

She twisted around on the bar stool she was sat on to face him properly.

"I have told her this," he protested. "But, he was her father too. She missed him as much as I did. So, maybe be patient with her?"

Ruth's heart sank. At the back of her mind, was this idea that she and George would sit down together in Nicosia, and they would have a heart-to-heart that she was beginning to formulate. During which, she would reveal her past for the first time. She would lay down the bones of her soul and bring out the ghosts of her past for him to see. The truth would set them, and her, free at last. Perhaps, the lingering memories of Harry Pearce would lose some of their devastating poignancy and the final barrier between her and George would finally fall. But at that moment, just as so many moments back on the Grid, she found herself passive and acquiescent in the face of a will that was greater than her own.

She raised a pained smile. "Alright, then," she said. "But, there is something we need to discuss, when we get back."

George's brow creased with concern. "We can talk now," he said, sitting beside her.

"Not now," she replied. "There's things I need to do beforehand."

"What things?"

He was becoming agitated, like he knew something was wrong but she was holding out on him deliberately. Like he was being forced out of the loop.

"It's nothing to worry about, I promise," she said, trying to sound light hearted. "There's something I need to double check."

He doesn't look satisfied with the answer, but he probes no further. Instead, he goes in search of the rest of the wine. She realises she could tell him right away; tell him everything. But still this unseen force prevents her, takes away her ability to form a coherent sentence. She let him go and returned to her own private musings before bedtime came and she could lie awake all night worrying about it, too. Still, at least, by the next day she would be in Nicosia once again, just a hare's breadth from the truth.


	4. Numerology

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. The usual disclaimers apply and I own none of this. Thanks again, and reviews would be a welcome.

* * *

**Chapter Four: Numerology **

Lucas knew he was dreaming again. It began before he was even fully asleep; a film reel of suppressed memories, playing itself out once more. It started in the same place; immobilised against the cold tiles, the smell of disinfectant strong enough to make his eyes water beneath the cotton cloth that shrouded his face. Slow dripping water, gradually got faster until he was sucking the cold fluid deep into his lungs, tricking his brain into thinking he was drowning. The burning in his lungs intensified rapidly, until a sudden rush of air cleared his throat as the towel was whipped off. Then, the scene changed as an unbidden memory re-awoke from his past.

The shock temporarily woke him, just as a fist pummelled the pillow mere inches from his face. He choked for air, before sinking back to the floor on which he slept, straight back into the dream as if there had been no interruption. A smartly dressed woman, not a hair out of place, looked down at him as she paced a wide circle around his prone figure. His eyes marked her progress, distracting him from the cold and the heavies who bore down on him. Casually, she drew on a cigarette as she came to a halt at his bound feet.

"Tell me, what is Sugar Horse?" she asked between puffs, a trail of acrid smoke snaking from her mouth and nostrils as she formed the words. "What is Sugar Horse?"

"I don't know what Sugar Horse is," he rasped back at her between panting breaths. "I. Don't. Know."

A naked light bulb flickered overhead, keeping time with the electric fizzing of the loose wires; creating a macabre strobe-effect that intermittently illuminated the blood stained tiles. His whole body ached so much, he could not identify one single part that hurt more. There was no separate pain. Just a full, bodily, ache left by the live current in their attempts to shock the intel out of him. He had given them nothing, however. No matter how high the voltage went, he could not tell them what Sugar Horse was. He simply did not know.

The reel shut off as he awakened with a muffled scream, arms flailing against invisible captors and falling on thin air. His ghosts had gone, and it was almost dawn. Cautiously, he lowered himself down again, slowly lest he should put his back out on the floorboards and looked up at the ceiling. While he waited for the sun to rise fully, he lost himself in his thoughts. Sugar Horse: was it an operation? Or, a person? The person who sold him out, or some other lost soul languishing in the depths of a Russian prison cell?

He rolled over on one side, shifting his view from the ceiling to the skirting boards. They needed repainting, but first he needed to know who Sugar Horse was. He also needed to get up and start getting ready for work, but he needed to stay calm and think clearly. He could multi-task, though. He rolled over on to all fours and pulled himself to his feet. He bundled up the blankets and pillows and dumped them on the bare mattress before dressing himself. The act of functioning on a normal level reassured him of his own sanity. But the unanswered questions still lingered, still clawed their way into his conscious mind in defiance of the rising sun.

Breakfast done by eight, the doorbell rang at half past the hour. Ros waited on the doorstep. Impassive and impressive, she regarded him coolly through the small aperture as he forgot to unchain the door before opening up.

"Rough night," she said, eyebrow raised and arms folded neatly across her chest.

He couldn't tell whether it was a question or a statement.

* * *

By nine am, Ros and Lucas strode on to the Grid together. Her eyes scanned the room, clocking every person present, scouting for just one man while Lucas hung up their coats. She turned to watch him as he went, still skittish and nervy – as he had been all morning, since she picked him up. She had tried to bring up the subject of Mace and Cyprus, but he was lost to her, gazing into the middle distance. It was a stark contrast to just the previous day, when he had been chomping at the bit to prove himself.

When he returned to her, his clouded eyes searched hers for a full, unnerving, minute. She was about to raid her store of witty remarks to snap him out of his strange mood, before she noticed him turning to Harry through the glass front of his office. He brought his hand to his throat, as though she had just tried to throttle him. "Do you think he'll mind me going in there?" he asked, voice tremulous and distant.

Puzzled by her colleague's sudden need for approval, she replied: "Just remember to knock. He'll love you forever, if you just remember to knock."

She had meant it to lighten the mood, but Lucas sloped away as though he hadn't even heard her. She watched him walk straight into Harry's office, quite ignoring her jocular advice. Whatever desperate, angry admonishment Harry shot at the errant Lucas, Ros couldn't hear it. Instead, she opted to leave him to ride out his peculiar mood and go with her original plan as she guessed at the root cause of his problem.

She walked across the Grid, picking up her pace as Malcolm looked up from his computer and made eye contact with her. He dropped his gaze immediately, as if warding off a bad omen.

"Malcolm!" she chimed out to him, smiling brightly. "Guess what I have for you, today?"

Malcolm looked concerned. The worry lines around his eyes deepened as he inched away from her, as though he had somewhere to run and hide. "Oh, really," he said, failing to conjure any enthusiasm. "What's that then? Or, dare I even ask…"

She leaned in a little closer, over the top of the computer, and smiled a little wider. "I have all your birthdays and Christmas's rolled into one," she informed him, deadpan.

He made no reply. Ros quickly glanced over her shoulder, saw Lucas and Harry now sitting at the boss's desk and deep in conversation. They could be there all morning, so her coast was clear. She moved around the desk and sat beside Malcolm so they could speak without raising their voices.

"I trust you'll be discreet about this," said Ros, gesturing the reluctant Malcolm forward. "But Lucas is, shall we say, nervous about this Op in Cyprus. In case history repeats," she explained, careful to keep her voice down, even though only Connie and Jo were nearby. Jo was lost in paperwork, writing up reports. Connie's eyes were fixed on the screen in front of her, unmoving and not noticing anything happening around her. "I wonder, do you have anything to put his mind at ease?"

Malcolm finally began to relax. "I take it you don't mean herbal remedies?"

"Not quite what I had in mind, no," she replied. "We're going to need ways to communicate with the Grid anyway. But, I was thinking, maybe you had some tricks up your sleeve. Something for fast, reliable, safe ways for Lucas and I to stay in touch with the Grid at all times. Some way that messages, warnings or information can be passed without being traced or intercepted?"

Now, Malcolm's blue eyes twinkled before a whole world of espionage trickery opening up in his mind. He smiled the smile of a boy in a free-for-all sweet shop. But, before he could reply, Connie cut over them.

"Numbers Station," she said.

Ros jerked around to look at her, but she was still staring at the screen. For a moment, she thought the Analyst was talking to herself. She didn't even realise that Connie was listening.

"Of course!" Malcolm exclaimed. Ros could almost see the wattage of the light bulbs behind his eyes getting higher.

"Okay, but that's a bit old school isn't it?" she said, trying to keep his enthusiasm in check.

Malcolm rolled up his sleeves as he dived into an enthusiastic explanation. "Shortwave radio signals cannot be traced. Email, texts, phone calls … they can all be traced and tracked. Long wave radio signals can be tracked, too. The electronic messaging systems are also prone to outages and faults. But, like I said, short wave radio signals cannot be tracked and they never experience technical faults due to the nature of the signals. They're on air constantly."

It was a golden oldie of the espionage world and the more Ros thought about it, the more she found herself warming to the idea. "And there's hundreds of Numbers Stations already operating from all over the world," she said. "Most are fakes and hoaxes, so ours would simply be lost amongst them, if only we have the exact frequency."

"Exactly," Malcolm agreed. "We can play music on a loop to throw off the short wave radio enthusiasts, and only broadcast to you at pre-arranged times. Either Connie or I will read out the number sequences that make up the message, but the cypher needed to decrypt the sequence will be held only by Lucas, me, Connie and you. A numerology of all our own."

"Include the time of the next broadcast at the end of each message, vary it, and use strict call signs to give us some warning," Ros suggested. "But, how can we communicate with you?"

Connie came over to join them, bringing her chair with her. "Easy," she said. "We still have a bunker in Cyprus, just beyond the buffer zone. It's not on any map, obviously. It has a radio transmitter that is still fully functional. If you don't mind giving up your hotel rooms, you can take cover in there."

Ros's impossible dreams of five star luxury exploded into the infinity of her mind. But, she had dealt with worse than living in an old bunker from an age gone by. "That's perfect," she concluded. "But, Malcolm, if you have anything else…" her words trailed off, the rest of her sentence not needing to be voiced aloud.

Malcolm smiled reassuringly. "I'm sure I can think of something."

Connie got up to leave just as Lucas left Harry's office. His anxiousness had been replaced with despondency.

"When are you leaving?" asked Connie, just as she returned to her desk.

"First thing tomorrow morning," Ros replied, heading to the seat next to Lucas.

To her irritation, Connie followed her across the room. She stopped, just behind Lucas and started whispering in his ear, words Ros couldn't hear. But Lucas's reply to Connie's question was perplexing.

"Sugar Horse," he said. "Harry just thinks it was just a curveball question; he told me to forget about it."

It was clear from the tone of his voice, that Lucas was deeply unhappy at having evidently been dismissed. When Ros turned to get a proper look at them both, she saw Connie lay a gentle hand on Lucas's shoulder, her expression soft and kind – like she had been with Jo when she was upset over Adam. The Analysts inner granny was, once again, rising to the surface.

"I know how disappointed you must be, but Harry knows best," she said, now kind enough to raise her voice so Ros could over-hear. "If you remember anything else, or if there's anything else you need to talk about, my offer still stands. I like to think I can at least be more personable than hard-hearted Harry, there."

Lucas smiled, grateful for her offer – whatever it was. "Thanks, Connie. For everything."

Ros waited, grinning impishly, until Connie had returned to her desk. Then, she leaned to her left, until her shoulder touched Lucas's. "Aww!" she cooed. "Look who's got a new admirer already!" she teased.

Lucas tried to look disdainful, but the corner of his mouth kept twitching into a grin. "Don't be absurd!" he retorted. "She's been really kind to me since I got back. Unlike you."

Ros arranged her expression into one of impassiveness. "Oh, I have," she blandly corrected him. "It's just you have no frame of reference, and don't yet know how bad I can really be."

She jested the conversation to its close. But, it still struck her as odd. Connie had never been known for her people skills, yet had seemed to take a shine to Lucas. Ros glanced at the Analyst, but Connie was watching Harry. The Boss was on his feet and at the pods, throwing his coat over his shoulders as he marched off the Grid without so much as a by-your-leave.

* * *

For the last two miles of the journey to Nicosia, Ruth blocked her ears to the family squabble that had broken out between George and his sister and turned her face to the window of the coach. The sun-soaked landscape passed in a bronze blur; the rapid Greek of the row formed a buzz she didn't even try to keep up with. The child, Nico, lolled against her side, mercifully asleep, on the backseat of the coach and oblivious to whatever disagreement between mother and uncle had arisen. She lifted one arm and draped it around his narrow shoulder, keeping him steady against the rhythmic bumping of the coach.

An hour later, as they pulled into the coach station, an uneasy truce seemed to have been declared. Instead, Sofia turned her nervy gaze onto Ruth, with a sluggish Nico stirring from his slumbers under her arm.

"That's my son!" she snapped, her English heavily accented and, possibly, unintentionally abrupt.

Nevertheless, Ruth was taken aback by the tone. She looked from her, to her brother. George glowered at her behind her back, but said nothing. "I know that," she replied, giving the boy a nudge in the back towards his rook of a mother. She was swathed head to toe in black, more like a widow than a divorcee. "He fell asleep, I didn't want to wake him."

Sensing that any further discourse would only serve to heighten the row, Ruth got up and disembarked without another word, nor so much as a backward glance.

"I'm sorry about Sofia," said George as they managed to snatch a moment alone as they collected their luggage from the side compartment of the coach. "There's something I need to discuss with you, later."

Ruth watched him as he ducked under the sliding door to fetch their bags and heaved a sigh. "I'll hail a taxi, then," she said, at a loss for what else to do. Anything that eased their exit from this place was fine in her books, and a whole swarm of cabbies flocked amongst the tourists, touting for business everywhere.

As she went, Ruth found herself scouring the crowds as though she expected Mace to reveal himself from the midst at any moment. Of course, he did not. But being in the same city as him made her spine tingle with nerves. Only once they were safely booked into their hotel, under George's name, did she finally breathe easily.

After a cool shower to wash away the long journey from Polis, she thought about what she would do next. Her passport, under the name Emily Austen, was tucked away in her trunk. She would need it to hire a car and drive out to Mace's hotel and stake the place out from a safe distance. Before anything else, she needed the proof of her own eyes that Mace was still in the City. From there, it was a matter of working her way inside. But that was the next step after this one, a bridge she could only cross once she arrived at it.

Once out of the shower, she returned to the bedroom – a partitioned ante-chamber that led off from the main hotel room. It was light and airy throughout, a relief from the heat of the day that she was immensely grateful for. She looked around for George, but he was obviously still helping Sofia and Nico settle into their room, or having a rematch on that squabble. Either way, she used her time alone to gather the items she would be needing. Her mobile had a more than adequate camera function, but the zoom was hopelessly blurry. If she took a picture from a distance, it would be far too pixelated. Instead, she liberated George's digital camera from his suitcase and dropped it into her bag. She had rice paper, delicate and quick to burn if she should need to, folded into her handbag, along with a pen to mark down dates and times of sightings. She needed to build up a case, and do the best she could this far from the Grid and with no back-up team.

By the time she was fully dressed and ready to leave, there was still no sign of George. However, as she went to pen a short note to him, she heard the key in the lock. Seconds later, he stamped into the room, clearly still in a state of high exasperation with his sister. He flopped down on the bed, staring fixedly at the ceiling.

Ruth watched him for a second. "Er," she said, just to break the silence and alert him to her continued existence. "Everything alright?"

He sat up again, looking at like really had forgotten she was there. "Oh, yes," he said, clearly it wasn't alright. "Do you have time for that talk?"

Ruth was torn between her investigations and staying to ride out the family drama. But, she had come this far and she needed answers, lest they should all be placed in danger. Whatever crisis had arisen, it couldn't possibly be equal to the presence of Oliver Mace in their midst. She looked at him apologetically. "There's something I need to do," she said, reaching for her bag. She glanced at the clock to check the time. "It's only three, so I'll be back by evening. Is that okay?"

She had expected him to pry into her business, but he did not. He looked like he was going to press her to stay, but clearly had a change of heart. "Actually, that would be better," he said, falling back to the bed. "I need to calm down and think straight."

Ruth frowned, now genuinely concerned at what was happening. "Is it really that bad?" she asked, coming to sit beside him.

He twisted his head to look up at her and sighed deeply. "We'll work it out," he said, reaching up to give her thigh a squeeze. "Don't worry about anything. Go out and see the sights while I rest. I'll be here when you get back."

'Sight-seeing' was one word for what Ruth was doing, but that – like so many other things – was a subject for future discussion. Seeing that this arrangement suited them both, she leaned down to kiss him before sweeping up her back and heading out the door.

The hotel ran its own car rental service. Modest vehicles, but with tinted windows in a small effort to keep the interiors cool. Ruth noted it appreciatively, the tinting would shield her from outside attention, while blending in with the vast majority of other cars around. She signed her name "Emily Austen" on the form, grateful that George hadn't insisted on coming with her. Within minutes, she was out in the traffic flow. The hotel she needed was just beyond the border, on the Turkish side of the city. She showed her passport to the young Greek soldier who manned the checkpoints on this side of the city, and began the surreal journey through the two mile wide UN buffer zone.

Not far from where she was, the abandoned city of Famagusta lay deserted and slowly being reclaimed by nature. A ghost town that even the ghosts had probably deserted by now. Its car dealerships where stocked with vintage, 1974 models, all going to rust despite their value on the market. Houses and lives, stopped in mid-sentence and suspended animation. If she looked to her left, she could just make out the derelict hotels and decaying tower blocks and it sent a shiver down her spine.

Before long, however, she approached another checkpoint, this one manned by Turkish soldiers who once again glanced at her passport and waved her through. Driving through the buffer zone was like emerging from a tunnel, with life and the world reappearing in a sudden rush after a strange blankness in which there seemed to be nothing substantial. She now found herself surrounded by Turkish culture. A Mosque dominated the side street, and opposite it a busy market stall blared out loud, western pop music to a group of chattering teenage girls.

Ruth slowed the car down and jabbed the sat nav on, trusting it to get her to the hotel she sought. As it happened, it was hard to miss. Bedecked in Turkish flags, it was six storeys high and towering over the surrounding buildings. The imposing and elegant glass front was manned by two immaculately uniformed doormen. Ruth drove around the block, noticing that there were no side entrances, and the rear entry was inaccessible to her, reserved for delivery vans only. If she had still been with MI5, they could have sneaked her into one of those delivery vans, but it was futile thinking of what she could be doing. Instead, she turned her attention to what she was doing and parked in the street opposite the hotel, where she could see the front entrance clearly. All she had to do now was wait.

* * *

The passenger jet stuffed with excitable holiday makers, crying babies and air hostesses with painted on smiles, with two MI5 field operatives discreetly seated among them, began its ascent. Tail flaps opening, nose nudging the air current as it finally left the ground completely. Lucas gripped the armrest, turning his knuckles white. Ros glanced sidelong at him with a wry smile.

"You're not nervous, are you?" she asked.

"No!" he retorted, briefly glowering at her. "Bloody take off, and the damn landing. I'll be fine once I'm we're up there."

She raised her hand to the small window. "But look," she teased. "All the little matchstick houses and all the little matchstick people down there."

It was true. The view was unsurpassed. The whole of England seemed laid out before them. The Thames River a streak of blue ribbon dissecting London, even the tallest of skyscrapers appearing nothing more than a matchbox. Urban greys punctuated by green stretches of field; a peculiar patchwork of a nation only visible as a whole piece from above.

"I'm not scared!" Lucas protested again. "I just don't like this bit very much."

Ros rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right," she answered. "Anyway, it's got to be better than your last flight a few weeks ago. Weren't you gaffer-taped to the wing for that one, or something like that?"

Lucas grinned. "Yeah, just one strong bump of turbulence and I'd have been sucked right into the engine like a stray sparrow."

"What a sorry loss that would have been," she mused as she flipped open the inflight magazine, one she probably had no intention of actually reading. "Anyway, what were you in a sulk with Harry about yesterday?"

"Oh, nothing," he replied, breathing freely now that the plane had reached its full height. The pilot himself informed them that were cruising at thirty thousand feet.

"Didn't look like nothing."

Her eyes were still on the magazine, but she was clearly itching to know about the meeting he'd had with Harry.

"I told him something, about when I was in Russia and they were interrogating me about something," he explained. "And Harry dismissed it. Said it was probably just a curveball or nonsense."

Finally, she raised her eyes from the pages on the magazine. "Can you tell me more?"

"I was interrogated for weeks about something, or someone, called Sugar Horse," he said. "When I … remembered … it, I went straight to Harry. He just said: 'is that it?'"

Ros's expression softened as she looked over at him. "Lucas, you know Harry, he may sound gruff at times but he would never dismiss you out of hand. It sounds like he had genuinely never heard of it, or them. Can't say I have, either. Don't fret it; probably, they were just venting their Cold War hang ups on you."

Harry, Connie and now Ros had now told him to forget Sugar Horse. Each time someone said it, it seemed to become harder to do. He waited, looking at Ros to see if she had more to say on the matter, but she really had begun reading the inflight magazine, as if to emphasise the fact that the subject was closed. He suppressed the sigh on his lips and turned to the screen that mapped their progress. They were flying over France, by that time, getting further from London, further from Moscow and further from the truth.


	5. Six Foot Under

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, your feedback means a lot. The usual disclaimers apply and I own none of this. Thank you, once again.

* * *

**Chapter Five: Six Foot Under**

Luckily for Oliver Mace, the Greeks guards barely glanced at the passports of those crossing the border. Luckier still, the streets were crowded with afternoon shoppers and parents in the thick of the school run; a human swell that he could lose himself in. Healthy paranoia was what he called it, using it as a security blanket until he reached the offices he was looking for. Squat and shabby, the building was dwarfed by the two on either side of it. The front was even boarded up, adding to its unique urban camouflage, perfectly reflecting the run down nature of the surrounding streets. So close to the contentious Turkish border, this place attracted few tourists and few tourists meant scant investment.

Mace glanced over it all, distastefully, before ducking around the back of the seemingly derelict office his next meeting had been arranged in. He didn't like it. Anything could happen and he barely knew the people he was meeting. He had placed his safety in the hands of his sources alone. Once around the back, the door was off its hinges - clearly, his new friends had kicked it in. He paused, looking around at his surroundings over the top of his dark glasses to make sure no one saw him entering. Satisfied of his solitude, he gingerly nudged the door displaced door aside and stepped in, greeted by the strong smell of dry rot and decay.

"Mister Mace, good of you to join us."

Having expected to find the hallway empty, the other man's voice startled Mace. A sharp intake of breath betrayed his nerves. He whirled around in the gloomy passageway and found an open door leading into a kitchen with cracked linoleum covering the floor. The room was lit up with candlelight; highlighting the dilapidation, rather than softening it. Just one man sat at the table, leading Mace to wonder who the "us" was, exactly. But, he reasoned, they were being listened to, at least remotely.

"You must be Leon Markos," Mace stated, stepping inside and trying to inject a little enthusiasm into his voice. "I am - as you say - Oliver-"

"We know who you are," Markos replied, supreme in his own indifference.

Again, the mysterious collective. Mace decided to ignore it.

"I very much doubt you know everything," he laughed, drawing out the spare seat at the table without bothering to wait for an invite.

Leonidas Markos smiled widely. "Mister Mace, Golden Dawn is a small organisation, as you undoubtedly know," he patiently explained, hands folded neatly on the table top. "But don't for one minute think that means we're stupid enough to be talking to any Brit without doing our research." The whites of his eyes glittered in the candlelight as he rolled them to the ceiling.

Mace bit down on his own ire. "I'm sure you have," he replied, stiffly. "But, if we could turn to the matter at hand-"

"You've been talking to the Turks," Markos interrupted him again. "Why should we trust you?"

"You say you know my circumstances," replied Mace. "If that truly is the case, then that should be proof enough." He was about to elaborate further, but decided against it. Since leaving the service in England he had been down on his luck, but he wasn't yet reduced to begging.

Markos looked back at him benignly. "You appear to be whoring your skills to the highest bidder," he replied just as calmly. "Why should that make you trustworthy? I would say quite the opposite. Tomorrow the Turks will up their bid, and you'll be back at the Embassy and singing like a canary for them. Although, I daresay the day after that you'll be back here again, trying your hand with us. I think your loyalty is perhaps more fluid than even we have imagined. Or, is there more to it than that?"

Mace had anticipated the first, but the question surprised him enough to just ignore it. "I have several years' experience working for the British Intelligence Services, I don't deny that," he said, laying his metaphorical cards out in the open. "I can get you in touch with people who could be very beneficial to your cause, surely you see that?"

"You're leading us into a trap, Mister Mace," Markos stated, still keeping his tone even.

"What on earth are you talking about?" Mace retorted, his temper had reached the limit of its endurance.

"There are other members of the British Security services here on the Island," Markos explained. "Did you think we wouldn't check?"

"There's a British Army barracks not five bloody miles up the road," Mace snapped, fist slamming against the table top. "What do you bloody well expect, you paranoid oaf!"

Markos' placid calm only served to heighten Mace's anger. Nothing disturbed the other man's serenity in the face of Mace's discomfort.

"I don't care about the soldiers," he said, sounding mildly amused - as if Mace had been sweetly naive. "I mean your colleagues from MI5. They're here, somewhere. Waiting for you to give the word and activate them - just as soon as you've led us into your trap, of course. Perhaps you're trying to recover your good name? I don't know, and I don't much care. Just be advised that we do know."

Mace was speechless. Markos, in his opinion, was clearly so far out of his tree he was in another forest altogether. He couldn't do business with a madman, so he got up to leave, drawing back his chair quietly to make a discreet run for it.

"I can see I've outstayed my welcome," Mace offered by way of some excuse for leaving so soon. "MI5 don't even operate beyond the UK."

He got as far as the door, before Markos called out again. "Tell that to Miss Evershed, then."

Mace froze, steadied himself against the frame of the kitchen door. "Who?" he asked, slowly turning back to Leonidas. "Say that name again."

"Your agent," Markos repeated. "Ruth Evershed."

He carried on talking, oblivious to the resounding silence into which his words now fell.

* * *

Razor wire topped the ten-foot high fence that ringed the compound. Sun bleached signs wired to the fences, bearing a pirate-esque skull and crossbones, promised death to trespassers in Turkish, Greek and English. But, the only attention Ros and Lucas drew, as they pushed their way through the metal gates, was from a lone Alsatian who sniffed at the fume-poisoned undergrowth around the pillars of the perimeter fence. He jerked his head up, met their gaze and eyed them suspiciously, weighing up the two strangers dragging their suitcases into the empty space of the desolate compound. He gave a perfunctory bark, just to say he was doing his job, before cocking his leg to urinate over the pillar before trotting off back toward the barracks just half a mile away.

Both Ros and Lucas watched him vanish in the heat haze, going the same way as the jeep that brought them to their temporary home. "Must be working for Mace," Ros remarked.

Lucas smirked as he consulted a dog-eared map in his free hand. A few moments later, he bleakly surveyed the compound. "Well, I don't see anything," he stated, glancing sidelong at Ros.

Ros was looking, too. Glacial eyes scanning the waste-ground, taking in the perimeter fence and the empty nissen huts in the adjacent compound; listening as they echoed empty as the soft wind whistled through the rust-eaten infrastructure. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on the far distance.

"Lucas," she said, giving his arm a squeeze. "Lucas look, there's that ghost town, Famagusta."

At her side, Lucas glanced over his shoulder to follow the line of her eye. Just a few hundred yards away, empty hotel tower blocks rose darkly against the clear blue skies. Faded and derelict, they also were ringed off with razor wire and pirate signs. "What of it?"

She took a few steps forward, towards the gate they had just come through and stopped when she reached the fence. "If we get time," she said, looking back at him to make sure he was listening. "We should, you know, let ourselves in and have a look round."

"They'll shoot you!" he pointed out, turning his attention to a thicket of weeds and yellowing brambles in the far left corner of the compound. Everywhere else was barren; it caught his eye.

"Where's your sense of adventure!" she called back at him.

"It got lost in Terminal Five," he retorted, producing a lever from his suitcase as he approached the thicket. "It's probably half way to Bolivia by now."

Grinning, Ros turned away from the view and returned to Lucas' side. "Is this it?" she asked, watching him wrench up a manhole cover. She dropped to her haunches and helped him pull away the heavy iron cover, pushing aside the brambles. Then, together, they leaned over the newly opened chasm that led deep below the ground.

"This is it," he confirmed. "Do you want me to go first?"

Ros pulled her suitcase over and rummaged for her torch. As she shone the beam down the entrance to their bunker, a small, iron rung ladder fixed to the side of the tunnel appeared. Luckily for them, it wasn't too deep. Just six foot below the ground, no more. However, the tunnel did no favours for claustrophobics.

"Breathe in," advised Ros. "I'll hold the light for you."

Once Ros dropped down the hatch, she landed beside Lucas who was already beginning to take a look around. The bunker was surprisingly spacious, with a chill in the air that contrasted sharply with the burning, Cypriot sun. To her immediate right was a kitchen and canteen area. To her left, a men's dormitory and a women's one next to it. Opposite the female dorm was the radio transmitter they would be using to send and receive messages. Then, they reached a corner. Down the left corridor were ladies and gents toilets. Down the right, was a plant room, the filters and servers, and an Officer's room, opposite a recreation area. Through the plant room, Ros shone the beam of the torch on another door, this one leading to a generator. She gave Lucas a gentle nudge and jerked her head in the right direction.

"Down there," she said, "get the electricity working again."

She held the beam of the torch steady as he pulled at some levers, connected some wires to unseen terminals and, eventually, the lights sparked into life. Lucas exited the generator room with a smile on his face, visibly more relaxed, despite the sparse surroundings they found themselves in.

"Now let's get this radio working," he said, sounding chipper and moving round her with a spring in his step.

She knew he hadn't forgotten about Sugar Horse. It had only been temporarily displaced by the fun and games of their arrival in Cyprus, and the desperate urge to touch base with The Grid. He was holding his silence on the matter, only to avoid nagging at her. But, the truth was, Ros had not forgotten Sugar Horse, either. On the flight, that morning, she had noted the name and filed it away in her mind as one would shelve a book. It wasn't an open subject, but it was still there, in case she needed it for future reference.

* * *

Harry didn't bother to knock. He swung the door open and took in the dusty old broadcasting suite. It was full of radio equipment made obsolete by the digital revolution; the washed up relics of the Analogue Age. Old transmitters, control panels that Harry couldn't even guess at how to work and ancient, bulky microphones hanging from the ceiling. In the midst of it all, sat Malcolm Wynn Jones, frowning as he twiddled a dial, causing wild oscillations and variances in pitch of the static streaming from the radio speakers. A sort of grating, meaningless whining white noise usually heard being blasted at prisoners in Guantanamo Bay all day and night.

Malcolm's face beamed out at Harry from between two bent antennae. "Oh, Harry, come on in!" he called above the static and waving him over. He looked elated in his Cold War tomb. "Isn't it marvellous?"

Unable to bring himself to puncture his techie's bubble of pure joy, he simple forced a still smile and gave a jerky nod of agreement. "Any signal from Cyprus?" he asked, sliding behind the mixing desk to sit beside his old colleague.

"I've definitely tuned in to the right frequency, but I don't think they've set up the station, yet. All I'm getting is static," he said, still sounding thrilled all the same.

Harry glanced above Malcolm's head, to where a red light was fixed to the back wall of the old studio. It wasn't lit, but he decided to ask all the same. "We're not on air, are we? I mean, no one can hear us if they accidentally tune in to our frequency?"

"No, not at all," replied Malcolm. "I will only push the broadcast button when the call-sign from Cyprus comes through."

"Excellent, we need to talk," he said.

Malcolm's expression neutralised itself immediately as he reached out to turn down the volume. With the static reduced to an almost soothing, background hiss, he spun his chair around so that he and Harry were facing each other.

"Is something wrong?" the question felt foolish, for when was something not wrong?

Harry raised that pained smile. "I'm afraid it is," he admitted. "Lucas came to see me the day before he left for Cyprus; to tell me he had been tortured for information about Sugar Horse."

He was aware that Malcolm had no clue as to what Sugar Horse really was, but that didn't matter. In the absence of Ruth, Malcolm had taken first place among his most trusted confidants and, in return, he knew the feeling was reciprocated.

"I see," he said. "Naturally I don't know what that is, and I shan't ask you to break any vow of secrecy, especially seeing as it's already compromised. But, are you expecting trouble?"

"I'm telling you this, because I need you to know: Sugar Horse was an impregnable ring of Assets at the very highest levels of Government in the Soviet Union. Despite the fall of the Soviets, they're all still in place, just waiting to be activated, should need ever arise. If this gets out, the consequences could be dire."

Malcolm looked at him thoughtfully, carefully sifting through the information. "Clearly, the FSB don't fully know what it is, just that it exists. So, the information didn't come from one of our lot, surely?"

"Malcolm, only five people knew of it: Bernard Qualtrough, Hugo Prince, Sir Richard Dolby and myself. Prince is dead; I've spoken to Qualtrough – who I trust with my life – and, Dolby?"

"He's an insufferable prat, but that doesn't make him a traitor," Malcolm mused.

"Which is what I'm getting at," Harry interjected. "They will come for me, Malcolm. I need someone on the Grid to be aware of that, and I want it to be you."

"But Harry, no one in their right mind would ever accuse you-"

"I know that, Malcolm," Harry cut him off again, despite his well-meaning. "But I don't think the real mole will see it that way. Now, I am working on files and gathering what intel I can and I'll keep you updated."

"What about Connie?" asked Malcolm.

Harry, more than anyone, could understand the other man's need to share the burden. However, this one – he knew – had to be kept strictly between the chosen few.

"I need someone level headed and cool under intense pressure," he said. "And, I need to get cosy with Arkady Kachimov again," he added, feeling almost ashamed.

Malcolm's brow raised, just a touch. "If Ros finds out…"

Harry leaned back in his chair, sighed deeply into the hand that now covered his mouth, as if he might vomit. He was torn between the need for justice, and the need to keep his assets safe. He knew which one would win. Regnum Defende, as always.

"I know," he confessed. "I know. But this is more important than revenge, Malcolm. We've already got him over a barrel because of Adam's death, so if he knows something, we might just be able to get it out of him. Oh, and not a word to Ros, either."

Silence settled over them as Malcolm digested the news. Meanwhile, the static on the radio ceased altogether, causing Malcolm to jerk upwards to turn up the volume. Suddenly, Boney M filled the room: "_Ra-ra-Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen…"_ Harry almost dissolved into laughter.

A moment later, the two men exchanged a bemused glance as Lucas's exasperated voice clearly intoned over the music, like a radio broadcast gone horribly wrong before the DJ realises what's happening.

"Here, Ros, let me try. You're doing it wrong!"

Ros, equally oblivious, responded with predictable fury, just as the chorus hit full stride. "For God's sake Lucas, how hard can it be? Let me press this button here-"

A click, and suddenly they were plunged back into the crackle of static.

"Well, at least we know we have the right frequency, now," said Malcolm, accentuating the positive. "And they're safe."

"Thank goodness someone is."

"_Ra-ra-Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine…"_

The music returned as quick as it had vanished, followed by an angry Lucas storming over the top of it.

"Right, now just leave it, Ros. It's working again-"

"Oh good, so turn this bloody racket off!"

"How?"

"Oh, for God's sake, Lucas!"

Malcolm and Harry listened in on the disagreement with growing amusement, exchanging equally baffled looks as the two slugged it out in Cyprus. Until, Harry suggested stepping in and putting them both out of their misery. Malcolm reached for a microphone, wearily taking a deep breath just as the notes of the song faded into silence.

"Quick, before we're drowning in the Rivers of Babylon," Harry drily urged.

"Ros, Lucas," Malcolm instructed clearly into the mic. "Just press the mute button on your left!"

"MALCOLM!" Ros and Lucas yelped in unison, clearly startled. Their long distance argument ceased abruptly, the muffled sounds of chairs being fallen off carried to the mics.

"Yes, and please use correct call signs from now on," he admonished them both, suddenly turning rather grave. "And numbers only; you're not Chas and Dave."

Despite everything else, Harry was still smirking insanely behind his hand, stifling the laughter that was threatening to erupt at any second. Even in the darkest hour, his team had the ability to carry him through, whether or not they intended it.

* * *

Ruth carefully unravelled the scrap of rice paper and noted the time and date written down on it in her dairy. Once done, she brought it out onto the balcony, and used Sophia's lighter to burn it. The flames took easily, and burned the whole scrap to dust within a second. She had caught sight of Mace at eight PM, when he left the hotel and took a cab across the border. She had followed him through the Greek area of Nicosia, onto a rundown part of town and proceeded to lose him. However, she had what she needed: visual confirmation that he was there, and her imagination had not played tricks on her the other day, when she saw him first.

She sat at the aluminium table on the balcony and took in the view before her. Nicosia central, stretched out to the border and beyond. A second later, however, and the patio door slid open again. She turned to find George standing on the threshold. He was smiling, bearing a glass of chilled white wine in his hands, extended towards her.

"A small peace offering," he said, raising a smile as he bent down to kiss her head.

She smiled, gratefully receiving the proffered drink. With one foot, she nudged a chair aside, motioning him to sit.

"I am sorry that I was home so late," she said, sounding genuinely apologetic. "It just, took longer than expected. And when I got back, you were in with Sophia and Nico. I didn't want to interrupt, that's all."

He smiled again, pulled her free hand to his lips and kissed it. "I'm sorry, too," he said. "I was bad tempered and took it out on you. I just wish you would tell me what you were doing."

"I will," she put in, keenly. "When I know a little more."

She had expected him to dig for more, but instead he frowned and sniffed at the air.

"Have you been burning stuff?"

"Just paper. I was bored."

"There are safer ways to pass the time, you incorrigible pyromaniac!"

Ruth laughed, relaxed into her seat as he shuffled his own chair over, closer to her. They both surveyed the view, casually and companionable in their silence. The sun was beginning to set, burning its descent behind the distant hills in a vivid pink glow.

"There was also something I needed to tell you," he said, at length. "Something urgent."

"I hadn't forgotten."

Nor had she. But she was so late getting back from tailing Mace that the squabble had been like an unstoppable chain reaction. Then, when the uneasy truce had been called, it seemed wrong of her to ask.

"Sophia is dying," he said, simply and plainly. "She has an aggressive tumour in her brain."

Ruth almost dropped her glass in shock. George's sister always complained of feeling ill and tired. Guilt crept up on her as she remembered all the times she passed Sophia off as a hypochondriac. She moved forwards in her seat, turning to look at George. His eyes were still fixed on the distance, not really taking in the panoramic sunset.

"I'm so sorry, George," she said, placing her glass on the table. "I had no idea it was so serious."

"We only found out just before we left," he explained. "That's why we were fighting on the coach. She's given up already. That's why she snapped at you while you were looking after Nico."

Nico. The child would be as good as an orphan, once his mother had passed away. But, she didn't quite make that connection.

"What do you mean?"

George's expression turned to remorse. "Perhaps it was wrong of me, but I think she needs to face up to the future. Or rather, Nico's future: I said that I would adopt him."

It occurred to her, then, of why she was so deeply fond of George. Sometimes, he could be so bloody crass, that he reminded her of Harry Pearce. Well, that was at least one of the reasons she had taken so readily to him. His gaze met hers, and his expression fell further.

"Did I do the wrong thing?" he asked, perplexed at why the womenfolk were angry with him. Sensing, for the first time ever, that Ruth had taken Sophia's side.

Ruth arranged her own face into an expression of patient understanding, not wanting to give the impression of being mad at him. After all, like that other man in her life, his heart was firmly in the right place. She selected her next words with care.

"It was a lovely, lovely gesture," she said. "One that will help enormously. But, perhaps, you could have timed it better. You know, once Sophia had had time to adjust. Or, adjust as much as she can to what's happening. I think you just blurted it out, didn't you? … Oh, you're dying? Give me your child."

George looked affronted. "I didn't mean it like that!" he protested.

Ruth sympathised. "I know you didn't, but that's what it must have sounded like to Sophia. Now she thinks I'm in on the plan and gearing up to just take her place."

He looked defeated as he buried his face in his hands, kneading at his temples. "I was just being practical. All this stuff must be dealt with; the sooner the better!"

Ruth drained her wine and got up to embrace him. "I know," she said. "But just take her feelings into account as well, yes?"

"Mmm," came his muffled reply, lost in her shoulder as they embraced.

All thoughts of Mace, of her own problems in general, receded rapidly. She would not – could not – tell him now. But, at the same time, she also accepted that this wouldn't make Mace go away. She would have to keep tabs on Mace now, if only to keep him well away from George and his family – the stakes had risen, so much higher now.

"I hope you understand why I'm doing this," he said. "I hope we can raise Nico together."

But Mace was back on her mind. She was on a knife edge of discovery – him of her, or her of him, she didn't know. But she knew she could not give a definite answer to his question, not with the ghosts of her past so close to home.

"Maybe," she whispered, still holding him close. "Maybe."

* * *

Ros stepped out of the shower block, towel drying her hair but dressed in a camisole top and sweat pants. Lucas, to the best of her knowledge, had skulked off to bed. But, the squabble they had still lingered in her mind. On her way to her own room, a large empty dormitory, she paused outside Lucas'. She hated apologies, but this had to be done.

"Lucas," she said, keeping her voice low in case he was asleep already.

She knocked gently at the door and pressed her ear close. No noise beside the transistor radio playing gently in the background. She was about to turn away, when she stopped at the last minute and folded the towel over her arm before trying the handle. The door opened quietly, revealing only semi-darkness and empty beds.

"Lucas," she repeated.

Nothing moved inside. Only the low, distant crackle of the radio, permanently tuned to their numbers station in case of any emergency broadcasts from The Grid. She knew Lucas wouldn't go anywhere without it, not with the state his nerves were in. Just as she was about to back out of the room, she caught sight of his foot on the floor, poking out from the end of one of the iron bedframes. Her heart beat raced, thinking he had collapsed. However, when she reached him, she could see that he had pulled the sheets off his bed and set himself down on the floor for the night.

She swallowed, finding her throat quite dry and constricted at the sight of him lying there. Eight years of abuse, so much so he couldn't even sleep in a bed any more. The body more used to the solid floor than the lumpy mattresses of home. She rarely pitied, she knew he wouldn't want it. But nevertheless, it was there. She wouldn't disturb him, so she leaned down and switched off the radio, instead. He snuffled and turned at the click, but did not awaken. Once the dorm was in silence, she backed out of the room, securing the door silently behind her. She would mention this to no one.


	6. Missing in Action

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. Thank you.

* * *

**Chapter Six: Missing in Action**

Lucas woke up late and, disconcertingly alone in a wide, empty dormitory. His bearings returned slowly, taking a few seconds to remember where he was and why he was there. He could have sworn he had left the radio on while he slept, but as he rolled over to get up, he noted that it had been switched off. He jabbed the on switch and listened to the static give way to the shipping forecast of their private frequency while he dressed for the day ahead. The smartest, least wrinkled jeans and shirt from his still unpacked case, before shaving as best as he could in the Gents bathroom opposite his dorm.

It was only half an hour later, as he emerged clean shaven from the Gents, that he noticed the absence of Ros. A rinsed plate and coffee cup sat unwashed by the kitchen sink, the Ladies dorm was empty and the radio broadcaster repeated their made up shipping forecast for the eight hundredth time – all in the absence of Ros. He returned to the kitchen for breakfast, while trying to quell the suspicion that she had begun the Op without him.

By the time he had made his toast and tea, he'd still failed to explain the ongoing absence of Ros. He wondered whether he'd been crying out in his sleep again, whether she had heard it and decided he was not equal to the task. He sat heavily at the aluminium kitchen table and ran a hand though his hair, trying to come up with some other reason for being left alone. But, his mind wandered back to his bedroom radio. Was it that static of the broadcast that attracted her attention, or had he been crying out in his sleep again?

The more he made a conscious effort to not think about it, the more his fears seemed to amplify in the dark space at the back of his mind. Until the sound of high-heeled boots echoed off the cold steel walls of the passageway outside the kitchen, the sound startling him into dropping his toast. By the time he'd scooped it up and tossed it into the bin, Ros entered and dropped two bags on the kitchen table.

"Tonight, Bob, you're going to be a traveller working your way around the Med," she declared brightly, leaning casually against the counter. "Think you can handle it?"

Lucas looked from the bags on the table and back to Ros, smiling with relief.

"I thought you'd started without me," he said. "I thought you were about to send me home."

Ros frowned. "Why would I do that?" she asked. Without waiting for an answer, she plunged into an explanation of the next phase of the Op. "Some friends at the Turkish Embassy have arranged for us to be cleaning staff at Mace's Hotel for the day. Well, I say 'us', but I mean 'you'-"

"So I get to be the cleaner?" he asked, smirking. "I guess you get to be the suave and sophisticated Hotel Manageress, belting out the orders to your unfortunate subordinates. I say 'subordinates' but, of course, I mean 'me'."

Ros beamed brightly. "You're learning fast, I'm proud of you."

"I do my best."

Taking a seat at the table, Ros helped herself to the last half of Lucas' toast. However, he was too relieved at not having been booted from the op to make any formal protest.

"Anyway, you're not quite right," she said, before taking a dainty nibble of the corner. "You're going into Mace's Hotel room. If he returns while you're there, he won't recognise you. If he remembers Lucas North at all, it'll be from a memo telling him you're languishing in a Russian prison cell and presumed soon-to-be-dead. As for me, I was part of the team who brought him down barely two years ago. Mace can bear grudges to the point of making it an Olympic sport, so best take no chances."

Lucas sat back down in his chair, letting himself slouch in defeat. "I can't even argue with that!" he replied. "So, where will you be?"

"Round the back, sat in a lovely jeep outside listening in," she said, swallowing the last of the toast. "Keep your wire on at all times, and tell me everything you do and see. I want copies of any computer hard drives you come across, photos of any documents you find. You know what to do."

For a moment, Lucas was pensive. "Tell me again, what happened with Mace?"

"I told you all I know," she answered. "He tried to frame Ruth Evershed for murder because her findings exposed a load of patsies burned to death in a detention centre. He fabricated evidence that she was a member of a terrorist organisation called 'Acts of Truth', along with the victims. He was aiming for Harry, but Ruth happily took a bullet for him."

"Do you think he's over here to strike against Harry again?" he asked, frowning into the dregs of his tea.

Ros shrugged. "We can't rule anything out, so rule everything in," she replied. "It is a possibility and nothing else could give him any better satisfaction. But, if Mace wanted revenge against Harry, I think we would have done it by now. That said, keep an open mind. I wouldn't put anything past him."

Lucas drained the last of his tea and got up. "These my glad-rags?" he asked, tentatively peering into one of the bags Ros deposited in front of him. He spotted navy overalls inside.

"You'll be the belle of the ball," she flatly answered. "Now, get a move on. Our car will be dropped off soon."

Lucas flashed her a smile and scooped up the bag as he passed her by, on his way to the dorm to get changed again. He opened the door to be greeted by the sound of the radio, broadcasting their stations strangely soothing forecast. The soft, male monotone voice reading the same thing over was what had lulled him into his first peaceful night's sleep since before he went to Russia. Once he pulled his overalls on, he scooped his bedding up off the floor. If Ros did switch off his radio, the previous night, he couldn't help but feel rather self-conscious of her noticing his peculiar sleeping habits.

* * *

Ruth parked her car outside the Hotel and, for a long moment, looked at the photograph on her mobile phone. It had taken her over an hour to hack the JIC's database to get that picture of Mace and another hour to select a suitable picture of herself to Photoshop the two of them together in a suitably romantic pose. In the end, she only used their faces and superimposed them onto two models sitting at a candlelit table for two. Her Photoshop skills were not a patch on Colin's, or Malcolm's for that matter, but she was pleased with what she had done. Also, the smaller scale of the picture on her phone hid any small mistakes she may have overlooked. Stored on her phone, it even made it more personal. More convincing.

Satisfied, she tugged the keys from the ignition and got out. It was suicide, and she knew it, but with the stakes so high, she knew she also had to protect her family. With Sophia terminally ill; George's emotional state in disarray, and a nephew who was about to lose his only parent, Ruth knew she couldn't afford to simply sit by and hope Mace went away of his own accord. But still, she didn't even know what she fully hoped to achieve through doing what she was about to do.

She passed the noisy market, still very noisy even at that early hour, and headed towards the entrance. The Doormen tipped their top hats to her as they swung the tall, glass doors open for her. She smiled politely as she stepped inside, almost bumping into a Concierge as she went. She hastily apologised and headed straight for Reception.

Mercifully, the queue was short. The holiday makers in front of her were swiftly dealt with and despatched with a set of keys to a room much smarter than the one they had hitherto. Ruth hastily pulled the photograph of herself and Mace, showing it to the girl on Reception.

"Hi, this is my husband, Owen Mason, and I believe he's staying here," she explained while the girl squinted at the screen for a second. "I called a few nights ago, saying I was stuck in Polis and that I was having trouble getting in touch with him-"

"Sorry, Mrs Mason," the girl said, talking over her but looking thoroughly apologetic. "Your husband was due to check out yesterday evening, but he's not been seen in over twenty-four hours."

Ruth schooled her reactions astutely.

"Oh really, so your staff have been trying to reach him, too?"

"Yes, his belongings are still in his room. If nothing is done soon, we may have to call the Police."

"Don't do anything yet. Would it be possible for me to go up there, to see if there's anything he's left behind?" asked Ruth, gripping the edge of the desk in anticipation.

However, the girl looked sceptical. "I really shouldn't," she replied.

"But you know I'm his wife," Ruth put in, sounding hopeful. "I've shown you the evidence."

Twenty minutes later, and Ruth has been escorted to Mace's room by a spare Porter. He unlocks the room for her and holds the door open. As she passed, however, she noticed the cigarette packet wedged in his breast pocket.

"Why don't you go for a smoke," she said, smiling and giving him a wink. "I won't tell if you don't."

For a moment, it looked as if the lad would refuse. But, the shadow of doubt passed his features quickly, and he took off at speed with a nod of thanks in Ruth's direction. Once he was out of sight, Ruth peered nervously in the room once occupied by Oliver Mace. Allotting herself no more than ten minutes to get in and out again, she began by opening the drawers of the desk. Only spare clothes, underwear she had no wish to go through and odd socks tossed inside without a thought. She had come to the Hotel to end this investigation and instead, she could feel herself being drawn deeper in as she began studying receipts left on the desk.

Receipts from Restaurants, cafés and, more interestingly, a shop selling mobile phones. One of the phones was sitting on the bedside table, so she lifted it to have a read through the texts and check for voicemail. She made a note of the name Leon Markos, a name that cropped up in three of Mace's messages. She also had an address. With nothing else standing out, she began to search elsewhere. The bed had been made, but not slept in. Underneath, was a laptop that was also password protected. Lacking her usual array of equipment, she passed it over for want of time. However, it was as she got back to her feet that a small knock came to the door.

For a second, she looked frantically about the room. If it was Mace himself, she knew, he wouldn't bother to knock. It was his room. She could see the Porter still puffing away on his cigarette in the yard outside the window. With nowhere to run, she had to answer before she raised any suspicions.

"It's open," she called out, trying to keep her tone even.

She listened as the door handle briefly rattled and someone tried to pull the door, instead of pushing it. Eventually, the other person entered. To her relief, it was just the cleaner. A tall, broad shouldered man in navy overalls and a matching cap. She could just make out piercingly blue eyes under a loose, dark fringe of hair. Ruth, however, slipped effortlessly into an alternative persona.

She breathed in deep. "He's still not been back, but the bathroom needs a bit of attention," she explained to the man, who looked back at her ill at ease and awkward. "And if you could see to these windows, they're a bit mucky…" She let her words trail off as she looked at him intently. "Are you okay, or do you need an interpreter?" she asked, realising he wouldn't understand the question, anyway.

However, the man smirked. "I think I understand, Miss," he replied, taking her by surprise with his clear, English accent.

"Great, well now you're here I'll leave you to it."

Ruth smiled, rewarded him with an enthusiastic nod and ducked quickly out of the room, clutching her shoulder bag like a shield. Once out in the hallway, she hurried back down to the lobby and out the front entrance, to her car. She had taken a chance and got some information, but being interrupted by an Englishman had alarmed her. Before she revved the engine, she looked back at the entrance, analysing what had just occurred. The Hotels around here employed as many English speakers as possible, seeing as most of their tourists were English speakers, too. But an actual Englishman was something else altogether. She hadn't taken to time to guess his age, but she knew he was too old for a gap-year student. Someone working for Mace? She couldn't rule it out. Either way, she revved the engine of the car and pulled out into the busy street. Grateful, eternally, that she finally had some solid information to work on.

* * *

Harry held the bottle up to the light, tilting it to make the amber liquid inside pour to the side. It was the good stuff, kept in a cut-crystal bottle for special occasions: particularly large bombs successfully diffused, or an Al-Qaeda cell neutralised for good. Such were the special occasions in this Section Chief's life. Placing the bottle on his desk, he procured two old tumblers from the back of the cabinet and gave Connie a wink.

"Humour me," he said, pouring two generous measures and sliding the first towards her.

Connie wasn't complaining, she accepted the drink with a warm thanks. Let the young worry about their health; both she and Harry were of an age to dispense with superfluous worries about time of day or units consumed. In fact, binge drinking hadn't even been invented when they were that age.

"Don't mind if I do," she said appreciatively, sipping at the fine malt. "It's awfully quiet on the Grid without Ros here to mortally offend everyone."

Harry grinned. "Yes, you can have your old job back now."

Connie shot him a withering look from over the top of her glass.

Beyond Harry's Office, the Grid was unusually quiet. The clocks had struck six, and even Malcolm was absent from his station. However, he was still manning the radio station, reading out reams of numbers, issuing instructions to Ros and Lucas in Cyprus. Since the equipment was back in use, word had spread and they found themselves having to broadcast quick, one-off messages to other agents for MI6, while they were at it. Malcolm didn't mind, however, he was in his element.

Harry steered his thoughts back on to the topic at hand, taking advantage of the silence outside.

"I called in on an old friend recently, Bernard Qualtrough," he said. "Been years since I saw the old team."

Connie's expression softened. "Now that's a blast from the past," she replied.

"I didn't realise you knew Hugo Prince," he put in.

Harry was careful to keep the tone of his voice light, like he was genuinely reminiscing about the old days. A dinosaur looking back wistfully on the glory days of his youth. Connie, however, barely registered any reaction at all. Just a half-smile played at her lips.

"We were lovers, as it happens," she confessed, setting her glass down. "For many years."

The whiskey bottle had been set at Harry's elbow, where he carefully retrieved it without knocking it over and topped up their glasses. His raised his own and Connie did likewise as they toasted their old friends, absent and bygone. As he did so, he carefully stored away the information of her affair with Prince.

As though trying to steer the conversation away from old Cold War colleagues, Connie changed the subject back to the Cyprus Op.

"Lucas is coping all right?" she asked. "He seemed somewhat skittish when I saw him last."

"I've had no complaints about him, if that's what you mean," he answered.

"Oh no, nothing like that," she quickly corrected him, but then paused as she collected her feelings on the delicate issue of Lucas North. "My concerns about him relate purely to his frame of mind. I know he's been experiencing a lot of flashbacks and nightmares about his time with the KGB – he told me himself. After such intense psychological pressure, can anything he says about the time be fully trusted? He may not mean to pass on false information, but one of the key effects of prolonged mental and physical torture is that, often, the victim loses their sense of what's real and what's in their heads. I'm not saying Lucas is like that, but you have to admit that this business with Sugar Horse has scattered his nerves to the four winds."

Harry listened to this lecture on psychology with interest, but made no specific reaction and certainly not to the mention of Sugar Horse. When he did reply, it was just to reiterate his ongoing confidence in the abilities of his Senior Case Officer. The fact that everyone connected, however remotely, to Sugar Horse was now under suspicion made him uneasy. But, now, that included Connie. Pillow talk from Hugo Prince? With Prince dead, he couldn't rule it out. He had meant to ask her advice on how to work his way into Arkady Kachimov's head space, but that had been placed on the back-burner, now. Instead, he would have to once again fall back on Malcolm.

"Connie, I need to get some information out to Lucas and Ros," he said, draining the last of his whiskey.

"Do you want me to do it?" she asked, doing likewise. "In fact, why don't you let me take the station over for a while. It'll give Malcolm a break and give me a chance to get some paperwork done."

He thought she'd never ask.

"That would be most helpful Connie, thanks."

He watched her leave, waiting until she was out of sight before flipping open the file on Arkady Kachimov that he had in his desk drawer. He knew it couldn't hurt to go over it one more time.

* * *

"Who did you say that woman was?" Ros asked as they ate their evening meal in the kitchen of the bunker.

It took Lucas a second to remember which woman she meant.

"Hotel management?" he suggested. "She told me what bits needed cleaning, then promptly cleared off."

As he spoke, the radio station went suddenly off air. Both of them dropped what was in their hands as Lucas snatched up a pad of paper. Poised and tense, they both waited for the call sign to chime out, but the weather forecast simply gave way to static, like the station had gone off-air. They waited for a full minute, looking at each other expectantly, as the static continued and no call sign came.

"Technical problems?" Ros suggested.

"I thought it was fail safe?" he retorted.

The fact was, the station had been doing it for several hours. Intermittently, the frequency would cave in, or what sounded like other messages were being broadcast a few channels up. It wasn't doing much for Lucas's confidence. He put his pad of rice paper down and returned to the remainder of his meal.

"Never mind that now," she said, steering him back on topic. "You told me she is English?"

"Yeah, I did," he confirmed, fidgeting with the dial on the radio again. "I couldn't very well interrogate her there and then, I was only a cleaner and what if she really was Hotel management? Mace has been missing for over twenty-four hours, it's only natural they'll be hanging around his room."

Ros shrugged. "You're right, but we can't rule out that she's working for Mace. Just make sure you remember what she looks like and tell me if you ever see her again," she advised, frowning in irritation as he continued to fuss over the radio.

"I will," he answered, distracted and distant. She wondered whether he was even bothering to listen.

"Lucas, put that bloody thing down and listen," she snapped, ready to snatch the radio off him. "If you've finished eating, get to work on the laptop you took from Mace's hotel room, and I'll deal with the mobile phone. Okay?"

Lucas whipped his hand away from the radio like it had scalded him, but said nothing more about it to Ros. Her temper had been on edge all evening, ever since he finished his "shift" at the Hotel. The disappearance of Mace had made their Op that little more complicated. So, he took himself and his radio back to the men's dorm, where he could work on both without Ros glowering down her nose at him.


	7. Golden Dawn

**Author's note:** thank you so much to everyone who has read and reviewed this story – your feedback means a lot. Usual disclaimers apply. Thank you, again!

* * *

**Chapter Seven: Golden Dawn**

It was late by the time Ruth returned to her hotel suite. The television was off, the ceiling fan hung motionless, but a cool breeze swept in from the open balcony door. She paused, looking for George. Their bed was empty, not slept in and as pristine as the maids had left it that morning. Checking the clock, she knew that Sofia would not be up, so George had nowhere else to be. The bathroom door was ajar, empty looking. To be sure, she slipped off her shoes and crept over to it. She blamed her jarring nerves on the events of the last few days, but she couldn't deny she was beginning to fear the worst as she slowly nudged the bathroom door wide open. Nothing.

Ruth paused again, turning her attention to the balcony. The net curtain billowed into the room on a small gust of wind and sank away again, as though enticing her outside. She stole forwards on tip-toes, circling the wide bed and crossing the rug to the door as silently as she could. She paused on the threshold, heart beat hammering against her ribs as she poked her head around the aperture. There he was, dozing in a sun-lounger with a book splayed open across his chest. She felt faint she took a sudden intake of breath, a rush of oxygen that made her head spin. After allowing herself a minute to win back control of her own nerves, she gave him a gentle nudge.

"George," she whispered, leaning down to be level with him. "George, wake up; it's late."

A snore hitched in his throat as he jerked away, alarmed at finding himself still out on the patio.

"Ruth!" he yelped, quickly rubbing the residue of sleep from his eyes. "You scared me."

She stifled a laugh. "And you scared the life out of me, too!"

She sat down in the second sun lounger and noticed the bottle of wine open on the table. Holding it up to the moonlight, she gave it a swirl. Satisfied that it hadn't become a final resting place for any bugs or insects, she took a deep draught straight from the bottle.

"Did they teach you that in the famous English finishing school you went to," he joked, watching her down the last of his wine.

Ruth grimaced as she replaced the now empty bottle. "Don't be silly, only common British girls go to English finishing schools. I told you, I am a secret love child of the Duke of Edinburgh and Margaret Thatcher. I went to a Swiss finishing school."

Her attempt at humour was followed by a long moment of silence, during which George regarded her closely.

"Will you ever tell me what you did?" he asked, propping himself up on one elbow. "I feel like there's this big mystery; something I don't know. And now, since we came to Nicosia, you vanish for hours on end and we never see you. I wanted Nico to get to know you."

Although she had expected this question for a long time, the timing caught her off-guard. Time and again, throughout the last two years, she had rehearsed the precise conversation she would one day have with George about who she had once been. But already, he had gone off-script by bringing the subject up himself. Ruth knew she had nowhere left to run. The time for the truth had arrived and they would both be in need of a drink.

"Wait here," she said.

He nodded his agreement and she got up to return inside. She collected her handbag from where she had dropped it near the front door. Then, she collected another bottle of wine from the mini-bar and two glasses. Armed with the essentials, she returned to the balcony in the warm night air. The moon was bright outside, reflecting off the restless ocean not two miles away. On either side were dark hills, studded with tiny beacons of light shining from invisible houses. The view was entrancing, even in the darkest hours.

She handed him a glass as they both took seats at the table. George frowned at it.

"Am I going to need this?" he asked, pointing to the glass, now brimming with red wine.

Ruth took a deep breath, feeling her already battered nerves prickling back into life. From within her handbag she produced her driver's license and passport and handed them over, directing him to look at them. A second later, he looked up at her frowning deeply.

"Who is Emily Austen?" he asked, with good reason. "She looks an awful lot like Ruth Evershed."

"Ruth is my real name," she said. "It's what my parents named me. It's what's on my birth certificate. Unfortunately, it's also on my death certificate."

George's mouth dropped open in shock, clearly trying to cut a path through a fog of confusion. "But, you're not dead!" he observed. "What is all this?"

She raised a pained smile. "Well spotted," she laughed. "I was an Analyst working for MI5. You know them, don't you?"

"Like, James Bond?" he said, it was always the first thing anyone said when confronted with MI5. "You were a spy?"

"I was an Analyst," she corrected him. "Our field agents did the leg work when it came to spying. I read the data, or analysed it and assessed the risk level. Mine was strictly a desk job. But I got a report about a fire at a detention centre for immigrants awaiting deportation. The fire was started deliberately and we lost several potential MI6 assets who all belonged to a terrorist organisation called Acts of Truth-"

"But that's a good thing, isn't it?" he asked, cutting over her. "Less terrorists!"

Ruth shook her head. "The fire was started by the authorities, on the watch of a man called Oliver Mace," she explained. "So, to deflect the blame from himself, he put the blame on me. My boss, Harry Pearce, arranged for me to flee the country, rather than be sent to jail for several life sentences." She paused, looked around her at the night time view of the beach. "And, well, here I am. Legally dead. I cannot go back. Ever." A chill came over her, bringing her out in goose bumps at the memories of those last few days in England, followed by months of wandering across the lonely continent.

She explained as best she could, answered what questions she could without betraying state secrets or, worse, her old colleagues. Despite all that, she couldn't tell whether he believed her or not. It was a tall story, even among the intelligence communities. Fit ups like hers were rare. However, George didn't react as she always feared he would: by throwing her out on the streets, or calling the police to have her locked up. But, he still looked as though he hadn't quite managed to take it all in.

"The worst thing is, I'm gone all hours because I've seen Oliver Mace walking the streets of Nicosia," she explained, dropped the most damaging of bombshells yet. "That's where I've been; keeping tabs on him because I need to know why he's here. Does he know I'm here, or is he up to something worse?"

George just looks bewildered. "Have you found anything out?"

"Only that he's been having meetings with Leonidas Markos, regional leader of a group calling itself-"

"Golden Dawn!" George snorted, sounding unmistakably derisive.

"You know them?" she asked.

"Everyone does. They're based in Athens, but they also fight for Greek control of Cyprus, so that means kicking the Turks out," he explained. "But don't look so afraid, Ruth. They're a joke; a laughing stock. It's just, they're also neo-Nazis. The disaffected and the angry set great store by them."

"Do you believe what I'm telling you?" she asked, setting Golden Dawn aside for the time being. "Or do you think I'm mad now."

George fell silent for a minute; clearly still reeling from her revelations. "I know you well enough to know you wouldn't horse shit anyone about something like this," he answered. "It even makes sense. The caginess, the secrecy, the reluctance to talk about the past. What I want to know is, are you happy here? Or, are you doing this to clear your name so you can go home again?"

The question came as a curveball. All along she had told herself she was doing this only to protect herself and George. But the opportunity to clear her name had always been high on her list of priorities. Where she had not gone, during her mental explorations, was what she would do once she had gained her exoneration. She could not, in all honesty, answer the question.

George took a deep breath. "I know you're not telling me everything," he said. "How can you? The world of espionage is…" he couldn't say what it was, it was something that had never encroached upon his life. "But I cannot blame you for wanting to seize an opportunity to clear your name. So, what can you do, now that this man is here? Can you confront him?"

"No, he would either kill me or run for his life," she replied. "Mace is ruthless. All I can do is gather Intel on why he's here and send it to some, er, old friends of mine. It would utterly discredit Mace while throwing him over a barrel. He may just confess, if the stakes are high enough."

George drained the wine from his glass and topped it straight back up again. "I admit I'm no spy, but let's see what you've got so far," he suggested. "Let's see if we can't work out a way to prove your innocence together."

* * *

Emerging from the manhole cover that disguised the entrance to their bunker, Lucas stretched out leisurely. Spending endless hours cooped up underground had the claustrophobic effect of a subterranean prison cell – and he had had enough of normal prison cells to last him a life time. A few moments later, and Ros also emerged, blinking into the natural sunlight and swearing audibly.

"So then," he said, whirling round to face as her as she got to her feet. "To Nicosia."

"To Nicosia," she confirmed, leading the way to their car. "I contacted our friends at the Embassy. They confirmed that Mace was holding meetings with the head of their Intel Agency, but the Ambassador got cold feet at the last minute. Nothing's been seen of him, since. But, Golden Dawn were mentioned by the Turks as well as liberal mentions of them in Mace's computer files and phone records…" her voice trailed off as she took in the view from their small, British Army compound. "Hot sunshine makes all the difference to afternoon briefings, doesn't it?" she asked, almost smiling.

Lucas had to agree, until he jumped into the passenger seat and promptly torched his arse on the lethal hot covering. "Careful, it's like an oven in here," he warned her as she got in beside him.

"Oh don't be such a girl, Lucas!" she admonished, but cursed loudly as she burned her hands on the plastic steering wheel. "It's not funny!"

Lucas composed himself as Ros pulled out of the army base and turned left to head towards the Greek border. The drive in the hot car was mercifully short, the house they were looking for was just a mile from the border. The district they found themselves in was run-down, with just ramshackle markets selling bric-a-brac that no one really needed. Chipped ornaments, bits of military paraphernalia lifted from nearby installations and passed off as valuable war memorabilia.

Ros eventually parked down a narrow side-street, where an over-grown alley led down the back of the buildings.

"Well, here we are," she said, counting down the houses to make sure they had the correct one. "Our last positive sighting of Mace is there." She points to the relevant building.

"It looks derelict," observed Lucas, wrinkling his nose at the dilapidated state of the abode.

Ros did not reply. Together, they got out of the car and made sure it was safely locked up before gingerly stepping over the crumbling perimeter wall that separated the back yard from the alleyway, ignoring the rotten gate altogether. Lucas tried the bell, but no sound came. Ros knocked, as loud as she could, but no one answered. Not even answering footsteps approached. Lucas gestured for her to stand aside as he aimed one ferocious kick directly where the door's lock was. The whole thing splintered in a pile of woodworm infested fragments at their feet.

"Yup, that got it," Ros wryly observed, raising a brow.

"I didn't think the whole thing would splinter," he protested, stepping inside and fumbling for a light switch. "Got a flashlight? The electric's gone and the windows are boarded up."

"Only on a key ring," she answered. "It'll have to do."

After a moment fumbling through her pockets, Ros managed to produce a thin beam of light from the aforementioned novelty key ring. The narrow beam darted across a narrow passageway, revealing doors that were hanging off their hinges, leading into dingy rooms. One opened out onto what was once a living room. A dining table was up-ended and pushed up against the back window, blocking the light. Wall paper was peeling back from the walls to expose damp, decaying brickwork. Wires hung from torn out electrical terminals, whether live or not, they backed out of the room cautiously.

"What on earth was Mace doing here?" Lucas asked, seriously wondering if they hadn't got this wrong. "Anything below the Ritz brings him out in hives."

"Desperate times; desperate measures," Ros conjectured. "He's been brought low since Harry and Adam stuck the knife in."

They rounded the corner in the passageway, in to the kitchen. Two candle stumps were welded to the table top where the wax had melted down. It was the first sign of human habitation they had come across.

"You don't think he's taken up dealing drugs?" Lucas asked, edging his way into the kitchen.

Ros suppressed a laugh, stepped ahead of him to keep the light in the room as much as possible. The chairs looked as though they had been kicked over, one of the legs was broken. She dropped to her knees, casting the light down with her. At first, she thought it was compacted dirt ingrained into the cracked linoleum. Up close, however, she could see it was dried blood. Several, liberal drops of it forming a trail back to the door Lucas had just kicked in. Ros briefly turned away as she called Lucas to over to inspect the evidence for himself.

"Look at the door frame," he said, pointing to where wood had recently been clawed away. "That was there before we came, look."

He was right. Ros looked again at where the chairs had been kicked over, clearly as part of a tussle. Streaks in the dirt showed where they had been heavily dragged. Lucas knelt down beside one at the far end of the table, poking at something under one of the chair legs with a pen produced from his wallet. Ros had noticed anything there, at first. But as she directed the light on to it, she could see it was a man's wallet.

"Open it up, I'll hold the light," she said, keeping her voice low.

He did so, sliding the cards out first. "UK driver's license," he read aloud. "For one Oliver Mace."

Ros sighed. "Put it somewhere safe," she instructed him. "We'll take a proper look once we're back at base."

While Lucas slipped the wallet into his back pocket, Ros shone of the small flashlight up a small flight of stairs leading to the first floor. As uninviting as it was, they clung close together as they silently crept up the stairs. More than once, Lucas feared their feet would go straight through the rotten wood, but the old, worm infested timber just about held their weight. After a minute, they emerged onto a landing mercifully lit up by the only window in the house not boarded up. They paused as they took stock of their surroundings, until Ros directed the light through an open door.

The search was painstakingly slow, despite all rooms being virtually empty. It was clear that the room wasn't being used as on office or regular meeting place. There was no paperwork left haphazardly scattered about the place, or even any further signs of struggle.

Ros sighed, evidently giving up the struggle. "No one's been up here," she said. "We're wasting our time."

"Mace met with Markos in the kitchen, that's where the struggle clearly took place," he said. "Let's go back downstairs and follow the trail again."

The only problem was, was that they wanted to avoid searching out in the open. Nevertheless, they began with the upturned chairs, followed the few drops of blood to the door and paused outside. The back yard was over-grown, with litter and refuse scattered liberally in the untamed weeds and grass. However, as they hunched down by the door, where it looked like the most violent part of the struggle happened, Lucas noticed something peculiar.

"Ros," he said, pointing to a yellowing patch of burdock leaves. "Under there – a pen drive." He picks it up before she can answer, holding it in the flat of his hand.

"Excellent," she replied. "With a bit of luck, it was dropped during the struggle."

Before they departed, they looked back at the kicked in door. After a minute of trying to obscure the gaping doorway, they gave up and headed back for the van. They could report a break in once they returned to base. First, however, they have to navigate their way back through the run down streets and military checkpoints of the bandit land they seemed to have wound up in.

* * *

Harry Pearce turned his back on the black waters of the river and looked back at Thames House. The windows were all blank, but he knew full well that even at that hour there were untold numbers of agents squirrelling away deep within its walls. All around him, the streetlamps shone an almost celestial haze in the London fog, casting a decidedly Dickensian air to the relentless modernity all about him. Only the traffic crawling by shattered his nostalgic illusions. Other than that, people hurried past, huddled deep in their overcoats and swaddled in scarfs, paying him no attention whatsoever. Whenever a middle aged, balding man in glasses passed him by, he lifted his gaze to see if it was Kachimov. But, so far, the head of the FSB was keeping him waiting.

Regardless of what hives of activity swarmed all about him, these days, he found himself increasingly preoccupied with the mole in their ranks. Unanswered questions crowded his mind; when they went unanswered, he found himself playing a game of probability. Was the person who betrayed Sugar Horse also the same person who betrayed Lucas? He could only wish he had pursued the matter then. He founding himself going over the personnel of the day: Tom Quinn, Zoe Reynolds, Malcolm… Each name came up, only to be instantly dismissed.

Growing restless, he was about to walk away when the black clad bulk of Arady Kachimov appeared through a swirl of fog, like some bad stage magician. The Russian walked with a definite spring in his step, greeting Harry with over-the-top joviality that made him want to vomit. The spectre of Adam Carter loomed large in Harry's mind, while he was this close to the deceased section chief's murderer.

"Tell me, what does the great Harry Pearce want at this hour?" Kachimov asked.

"To apologise," replied Harry.

Kachimov looked as though he hadn't quite heard that properly. Harry, to give the impression that they were merely two business partners on their way home from work, started strolling along the embankment. He was grateful for the dark and the fog, it formed a thin veil behind which he could shroud the contempt in his eyes.

"You are toying with me again, aren't you?" Kachimov laughed, as if this really was a joke.

"No, I'm being serious," Harry pressed on. "I didn't realise I had taken out one of your most important Assets within my organisation. I know how much you were relying on them."

There was a moment of silence, filled only by their sharp footfalls against the paving stones.

"You still suspect Lucas then, Harry?"

He knew that Lucas was away. Harry made a mental note of that, while refusing to confirm nor deny anything.

"You are right not to, of course," Kachimov continued. "Eight years in the hands of a hostile nation – how could you ever trust him again?"

Harry smiled. "Trust is a very big word, isn't it?" he mused. "How can you ever trust anyone in this game? Strip away our skin and you'll find another skin: layer upon layer of subterfuge, aliases and downright lies." He kept the nonsense coming, it seemed to be the sort of thing Kachimov liked, it made him feel deep. "You know, like those little dolls you get in Russia: one inside the other, always getting smaller."

They parted after a short meeting during which nothing of substance had been achieved, but it let Kachimov know that MI5 were not done with him yet. He crossed the street, picked up his pace and kept it going until he reached Thames House. Once back on the Grid, he headed straight for Malcolm's desk, where the techie was working on something undoubtedly shadowy.

"I've fed false information to Kachimov," he said. "I want you to listen in to every phone call and hack every email from Kachimov to see if he talks about it. You never know, we might just flush the mole out that way."

Immediately, Malcolm began tapping away at his keyboard, making the computer turn tricks that Harry couldn't begin to comprehend. "I hope you're right," Malcolm intoned, eyes still fixed on the screen in front of him. "Connie won't mind manning the radio station for a few days."

"Thank you, Malcolm."

With that, Harry returned to his office and poured himself a measure of whiskey to ease him through the Sugar Horse file. He knew the false information, naming Lucas as a suspect in the mole conspiracy, was a long shot. But, he had reasoned, it may just trigger some talk from the FSB. Lucas was safe in Cyprus, protecting him if anything went wrong. It was as harmless as it was unlikely. Or at least, it was as harmless as anything could be with MI5.


	8. The Numbers Station

**Author's Note:** Thank you, as always, to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. The usual disclaimers apply. Thank you again, and I hope everyone enjoys the story.

**Additional Note:** for the sake of simplicity, the number code I'm using is counting down from 26 (A) to 1 (Z), but with each letter's numeric multiplied by 3. So A is actually 78 and Z is 3. Naturally, the real MI5/6 would never, ever, use any code so simple to break. The phonetic alphabet in use is Standard English.

* * *

**Chapter Eight: The Numbers Station**

Ros was off air. The red light above the door of the radio broadcaster was dulled, but before she did anything, she let the shipping forecast finish one more rotation. While she waited, she reached for a stopwatch from one of the draws and set the timer to two minutes exactly. As soon as the forecast was done, she flicked the switch to go on air. Simultaneously, the over-head lights dimmed, making way for the warm, red glow of the transmitter LED above the door. Once on air, she set off the stopwatch, keeping her eye on it as precisely two minutes of silence was counted down before she played her call sign. A rendition of Green Sleeves, one that sounded like it had been recorded off an Ice-cream van, chimed out across the air-waves. To distract herself from the infuriating jingle, she set the timer on the stopwatch to count down another two minutes of silence, the time which her Thames House colleagues would use to get ready to receive her message.

When, finally, the process was complete, Ros cleared her throat and glanced down at the papers in her hands. TARGET MIA, followed by the relevant numbers in Lucas's neat hand, written on the first page of rice-paper.

"Twenty-one. Seventy-eight. Twenty-seven. Sixty. Sixty-six. Twenty-one. Forty-two. Fifty-four. Seventy-eight. Mike. India. Alpha."

Message concluded, she let her colleagues know by playing the Green Sleeves jingle again, before switching back to the shipping forecast. The rice paper on which the numbers were written was burned instantly, and she left to return to the recreation room.

Outside, in the passageway, the lights were dimmed. The digital clock informed her that it was gone midnight, but tiredness eluded her. She never thought she would care about the fate of a man like Oliver Mace, but the clues were compelling her to dig ever deeper. The signs of struggle; the opacity of evidence. One minute he was there; the next it's as though he vaporised. The only clue they could glean from his mobile records was Golden Dawn and the Turkish Ambassador. Two groups, diametrically opposed. Then, there was their numbers station, continually going off-air for no reason, switching to another frequency they could not fathom, before mysteriously returning. Lucas had noticed, but she had not shared her fears in case he, too, read too much into it. In his fragile state, the consequences could be disastrous.

Ros paused outside the ladies dorm and leaned against the wall, letting herself slide to the floor. Doubts flickered through her mind; something had been amiss on the Grid since Lucas's return. All she had for clues were footprints in the snow, rapidly smothered by a fresh fall. Like the day Lucas told Harry about Sugar Horse. Harry passed it off as a curveball question. But as soon as Lucas left the office that day, Harry mysteriously vanished for several hours. Then there was Connie's almost grandmotherly concern, the way she rushed to defend Harry's stance. Even Malcolm's suggestion of using the numbers station in the first place had begun to take on a sinister hue. Harry, Malcolm and Connie – the Cold War old-guards all working together to keep Sugar Horse, whatever it was, in the shadows. The man who almost compromised it – Lucas – shipped off on a convenient foreign operation. It had begun to look too convenient. Only her implicit, absolute, trust in Harry Pearce buoyed up her confidence in this op. Whatever it was he was playing at, she knew he would have his reasons.

Still sat on the floor, Ros gave herself a firm mental shakedown and inwardly admitted her powerlessness to act at that moment. Sugar Horse would have to wait, because those footsteps she thought she heard probably wouldn't. Slowly, she got back to her feet, keeping her keen eyes trained on the direction of the kitchen. The sound came again, a muffled thump.

"Lucas," she called out softly, trying to peer around the corner.

Lucas was already in bed; he had excused himself just before she made the broadcast. Still, she strained her ear, listening out for an answer. Nerves stretching in the silence, she gradually eased the door to the ladies dorm open to retrieve her gun. Stepping back outside, she pulled back the hammer and aimed the weapon in front of her as she went to investigate the unexplained noise. Another thump and a soft moan, quickly followed by an agonised shout shattered the silence. The intruder was nothing more than Lucas's Russian demon.

"Lucas!" Ros gasped, relieved as the moment of panic passed.

After she had disarmed her gun, she quickly replaced it before dashing back to Lucas's door. She knocked, hoping the noise alone would wake him. But the sounds of him lashing out in his sleep continued uninterrupted. Hope diminished, she let herself in and knelt at his side, where he slept fitfully on the floor. In the grip of a moment of inertia, Ros hovered over him for a moment, arms open as she assessed the most gentle way of waking him.

"I dunno …" he shouted. "Not Sugar Horse."

"You and me, both," she replied to his unconscious lamentation. "Lucas, wake up!"

She grabbed his flailing arms by the wrists before he could do anymore damage to himself, given the proximity of a metal filing cabinet at his 'bedside'. She gripped him tight, holding him down as his struggles slowly ceased and his eyelids flickered open.

"Hey," she whispered. "You were dreaming again."

He looked dazed, then ashamed. Ros let go of his wrists, satisfied that his wits had returned, and helped him to sit up and get his bearings back.

"I'm so sorry," he muttered, not meeting her gaze through shame. "I-I-"

"Ssh!" she cooed, pulling him up.

She didn't know where it came from, it hadn't been a conscious decision, but as she pulled him up from the floor into a sitting position, she folded her arms around him.

"Don't be afraid anymore," she soothed, holding him close. "No one's going to hurt you."

As the tension dissipated, her eye fell on the digital radio at his side. He used the forecast to lull himself to sleep. But now, the lights were all on but the station was silent but for the distant crackle of static. The station was off-air, again; had her message even reached home? For a moment, she almost forgot that she was holding Lucas, and felt herself tense up. Eventually, Lucas extricated himself.

"I'll be alright now, boss," he said, still hanging his head in shame.

"No," she replied. "No, you won't be. Get up a minute."

Finally, he turned to look at her. His blue eyes appeared colourless in the pale light. After a moment's hesitation, he did as she asked. He climbed to his feet in stages, still stiff from sleep. His pale skin, spattered with dark patches of prison tattoos, soft to the waist where his dark tracksuit bottoms hung low on his hip bones. She couldn't pretend she wasn't looking.

"You can't keep doing this, Lucas," she said, bundling up his bed sheets from the floor.

"I can't help it," he protested. "It just happens."

"No, not that," she said. "But you can't keep sleeping on the floor. You're not in prison anymore."

She was brisk, business like as she spread the sheets out on a nearby bed. It wasn't exactly hospital folds, but it was passable for one night.

"I like being on the floor," he feebly put in, helping her arrange the sheets anyway.

"You'll like breaking out of that prison in your head even more, I promise," she retorted. "Now just get in and try to get some proper sleep."

She held the duvet up by one corner and stared him down, defiantly. Not being given much choice in the matter, he followed her silent order. But, as he passed her, she caught hold of him again and, before she even knew what she was doing herself, their heads butted together as their lips met in a firm kiss. It lasted for barely a second and, instantly, she was filled with horror at what she had done. She pulled away, sharply, frozen in the moment. Lucas, also, looked up at her in surprise.

"Well, I didn't see that-"

"I'm sorry, that was unprofessional," she blurted over him. "I'll see you in the morning."

She turned around and marched towards the door, refusing to look back and see the expression of horror in his face.

"Ros, wait!" His voice trailed after her, but the door slammed shut on any further implorations.

Ros didn't stop until she was safely back in the lady's dorm, alone with the door locked shut. Her face burned with embarrassment; emotions reaching boiling point. Sugar Horse, numbers stations, disappearing enemies and the footprints in the snow; it was all piling on top of her. To compose herself, she sucked in several deep lungfuls of air, bringing her heart rate down. Thoughts and feelings rationalised, she calmly returned to Oliver Mace's dropped memory stick. That, with Lucas, simply didn't happen.

* * *

Neither Ruth nor George had gotten any sleep. They had moved indoors, where they had ready access to coffee and sandwiches as they ran through the evidence together. She had explained, again, what led to her downfall at MI5, why Oliver Mace was the worst possible news, and why she needed to clear her name. But that alone didn't bring them any further forward. On the table in front of them, Ruth's dairy with times and dates of sightings, sat open at the relevant page. Sheets of paper with diagrams, theories and evidence, were strewn about in no particular order. Looking at the jumble of papers, Ruth realised just how out of practise she was.

"It still makes no sense," said Ruth, slumping forwards across the table. "We just don't have enough to go on."

There was a moment of silence as George continued to read through a page of notes. Ruth had already called the hotel as "Owen Mason's wife", which informed them that Mace was still missing. George had also called them, posing as a former customer to complain that a watch had been stolen from his room in an effort to glean information about the cleaners. Tall, dark haired, pale skinned and English. That was the cleaner blamed for the "theft", but they refused to give out personal details of staff members and forwarded him to the Police. In accordance with Ruth's innate sense of justice, the watch was conveniently rediscovered at the end of the call, before any real staff members could get into any real trouble. That little attempt at subterfuge achieved precisely nothing. But, once more, he was struck with inspiration.

"You hacked into the Greek and Turkish Government databases, yes?" George asked, peering over the top of his page of notes.

Ruth nodded, not in the least bit abashed.

"Then, you can hack into Golden Dawn just as easily?" he added.

Ruth sat up straight again, accidentally pulling more strands of hair free from its bindings as she went; giving herself an almost hedgehog like appearance. Her brow creased as she mulled it over. "Yes," she replied. "More than likely."

"I mean, you did it from our house without being traced-"

"I used to do it for a living!" she laughed.

"It's just, I am worried about you staying here with this Mace on the loose," he said. "I would be happier if you went home and continued the investigation from there. You can hack from anywhere, no?"

He had a point. Every corner she turned in Nicosia, she expected to walk straight into Mace. In every queue she waited in, she expected the man behind her to be Oliver Mace. He was in every shadow; lurking down every dingy side street. She could feel her own paranoia flourishing in the dark, and that was on top of everything else. And she was tired. Tired of chasing shadows in a strange city, waiting for a breakthrough that seemed to grow ever more distant.

"Will you be okay here, on your own?" she asked. "I mean, with Sofia and Nico?"

George flashed her a reassuring smile. "Of course!" he replied. "So long as you understand why I need to stay. Sofia needs me and I think she still wants to check for information on our father. I promised her I would help with everything."

No matter what was happening in Ruth's life, the search for the missing victims of the invasion went on. More remains were exhumed with each passing day and, soon, George would be called upon to provide a DNA sample. Ruth had already resolved that they would not come this far, only to be halted by the ghosts of her past.

"I understand, George," she assured him. He really was a good man. "Remember, not a word to anyone. Even if Sofia asks, you tell her work needed me as a matter of urgency."

Reaching down for the laptop by his feet, to book her a ticket online, he breathed a sigh of relief. "You should try to get some sleep on the coach," he advised. "You look exhausted. And I'll get Marko to collect you from the station."

Ruth suppressed a yawn. "Actually, I think I'll get some sleep now," she said, turning towards the balcony doors, beyond which the day broke, bright and beautiful.

George agreed readily and Ruth didn't hesitate. She rose to her feet, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders, before lurching towards the bed in the next room. She was virtually asleep before she even got there, safe in the knowledge that would be back in Polis before nightfall.

* * *

Back at Thames House, concentration came reluctantly to Harry Pearce. Alone in his office, he could only look through the window, out over the Grid and guess at what the others were doing. Periodically, his gaze fell on Malcolm Wynn-Jones, watching as he studied his computer screen intently. Making the anticipation worse, teasing him into a state of permanent restlessness, was the knowledge that the techie was watching over the FSB. He had to fight hard against the temptation to interrupt every ten minutes, demanding to know if anything was coming up yet.

In the meantime, he turned his attention to the files on the Sugar Horse Assets. Richard Dolby, Hugo Prince, Bernard Qualtrough. All men who had given their lives to the service, whether he liked them or not. He raked over each file, searching for the slightest of clues. Prince may be dead, but he could easily have betrayed the service before his union with the Grim Reaper. For reasons he could not quite fathom, the knowledge that not even the dead were beyond suspicion, saddened him greatly.

Carefully, he cross referenced each one, in person. But the truth was, the files in themselves would reveal nothing. The mole would have to be flushed out, and their best hope of that remained with Arkady Kachimov and the false information Harry had already fed to him.

He got up, about to relocate himself to the paper archive for further research, when Malcolm finally caught his eye. Harry motioned for him to come into the office, where they could speak privately. Not another soul on the Grid had been informed of the breach, and he wanted it to stay that way. As Malcolm crossed the Grid, Harry tried to read his expression: happy, frustrated, or sad. But, his people reading skills failed him.

"Come right in," Harry instructed his old friend. "Anything exciting?"

"I've intercepted email and recorded every phone call," he said. "Jo's helping, but she doesn't know why we're doing this."

Harry nodded his approval. "Well, are they saying anything?"

"Yes, after a fashion," Malcolm replied, enigmatically. "They are talking, but there's still vital bits of information missing. It's like they have another channel of communication to pass through, and only certain snippets are going through electronically."

Harry leaned back in his seat with a deep sigh. "So, what are they saying?"

Malcolm cleared his throat. "Well, Kachimov is gratified that you think Lucas is the mole. You see, he thinks that because Lucas' mental state is so, er, fragile, that these allegations will only serve to turn him. Oh, the irony of a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"Has he said anything about Lucas' possible whereabouts?" he asked, once he had composed himself.

"No," Malcolm replied. "Sounds like he's been put on a back-burner, for now. They're more concerned with the real mole, whose name is being firmly and methodically, left out of all electronic communication."

"Which means it's deeply encrypted somewhere on the FSB's databases," Harry conjectured. "Sounds like you've got some hacking to do."

"Hmm," Malcolm agreed. "It shouldn't be too difficult. By the way, there was one more thing I needed to run past you."

It didn't bode well. Harry's scowl became more deeply entrenched as he regarded Malcolm across the desk. "Which is?"

"Ros failed to make a broadcast last night," explained Malcolm. "Or, if she did, we didn't get it."

"Are you able to scan for signal blockers?" Harry asked, voicing the first concern to pop into his head.

Naturally, it was all second nature to Malcolm. "Nothing, there's no reason why we shouldn't have got that message."

"If neither she nor Lucas makes contact tonight, I will break protocol and phone them," he said. "If something's happened to them, we'll soon know. If it's being sabotaged from outside, we'll more than likely have our mole. It's too much of a coincidence that Lucas is being targeted yet again."

"Not a word to anyone, then," Malcolm smiled, feeling the net close a little further round their quarry.

They understood each other, as always. Harry dismissed him with a nod of thanks and a Cheshire Cat smile. In amongst the Sugar Horse business, he had almost forgotten about Mace and his antics abroad. He had let it slip, assuming that Lucas would be safely out of the way there, with the added fortress-like protection of Ros at his side. If they were being sabotaged, he could have grossly miscalculated the whole affair. He closed his eyes, blotting out his surroundings for a few precious moments, as he let the morphing shape of the problem expand in his mind. He would find a way; there was always a way.

* * *

Lucas scrolled slowly through the information on the memory stick. Every so often, he paused, jotted down a note of interest, before picking up where he left off. In the darkness of his dormitory, the contrasting brightness of the screen made him squint through the early fog of a headache. No matter how lost in his work he became, however, every sound from outside made him jump to attention. A few hours before, he heard the heels of Ros's boots marching past his door. He'd dropped everything, strained to listen to see if she slowed down outside his door. But, she didn't. If he heard her in the kitchen, he chose that moment to get himself a cup of tea; only for her to outright blank him as she disappeared into her own room.

At that moment, he heard a muffled crash followed by some profound swearing from Ros, drifting through the walls. Deciding to end the impasse, Lucas dropped his work once again and left the room. He stopped outside the Lady's dorm, listening for a few second as whatever had fallen was put back into place. Once it seemed that order had been restored, he knocked sharply on the door.

"What?" came the blunt response.

"Ros, it's me. It's Lucas."

"Seeing as there's only two of us here, I'd worked that out for myself. What do you want?"

He sighed, rolled his eyes. "To talk."

"Better come in, then."

Finally, he seemed to be getting somewhere. He let himself in and found her sat at a computer, searching through Mace's phone records for the second time. She didn't turn to look at him; nor did she invite him to sit down. Instead, he hovered uncertainly near the door. Neither fully inside, nor outside; just in some limbo. Something he'd become used to.

"Look, Ros, about last night-"

"Yeah, about that," she cut over him, still looking at the screen. "I was thinking we should now extend the search for Mace to the rest of the country."

He was grateful for her inattentiveness, so she couldn't see the look on his face. "That's not quite what I was thinking-"

"Have you got any better suggestions?" she demanded, growing more waspish.

For the moment, he decided he would play along with the ice-queen act. "Yes, I agree about extending the search. But I think we need to talk about-"

"Golden Dawn, Lucas, we need a way in with them," she talked over him, yet again.

It was like being a child, with his parents arguing over his head. He couldn't get a word in edgeways. He was making a noise, but he was simply invisible to her. She was every bit the Queen Bitch he had been first introduced to. Only now, he wasn't so beaten down and timorous as to be willing to tolerate it – a small feat that Ros had herself to congratulate for.

"Look, what is your problem, Ros?" he demanded. "Why are you doing this?"

Finally, she turned from the screen and glared at him. "Because it's our job, Lucas. I suggest we remain focused exclusively on it."

He threw his hand up, a gesture of defeat. He had better things to do than argue with a woman, when all was said and done, he didn't really know – less still, understand.

"Fine then," he retorted, hotly. "I'll do that."

Like a teenager in a strop, he let the door slam after him as he left. He barged through his own door and gave that a kick shut for good measure. To his eternal irritation, the radio had gone off again. Only this time, instead of trying to retune it, he simply picked it up and threw it at the wall in frustration. The resounding crash of the device hitting the wall snapped him out of his anger and he flopped down on the bed, dropping his head into his hands. Slowly, he took deep breaths and massaged his temples, soothing away the tension that had built at his temples.

He was about to lie down, when the call sign jolted him out of his reverie. He hadn't realised that the radio was even back online. Hastily, he snatched it up to check the frequency. It was several kilohertz above the normal one they used. The call sign ended, two minutes of silence followed in which he snatched up a pen to write down the numbers, anyway.

"Thirty-three. Twenty-seven. Thirty-six. Thirty-six," it began. Lucas recognised Connie's voice and breathed a sigh of relief. All along, they had the incorrect frequency. The numeric message continued: "Forty-five. Fifty-four. Twelve. Fifteen. Fifty-four. Thirty-six. Sixty-three. Nine. Three. Fifty-seven. Forty-two. Forty-five. Fifty-four. Sixty. Twenty-four."

Two minutes of total silence elapsed, before Connie repeated the numbers again and Lucas checked them off, making sure he had each one and in the correct order. The message ended again, and Lucas reached for his cypher. However, another voice came over the airwaves. The voice of an older man, not Harry or anyone else he recognised. Lucas frowned, wondering what was happening as he reached for his pen again. The man responded with the phonetic alphabet:

"Charlie. Oscar. November. Foxtrot. India. Romeo. Mike. Echo. Delta."

The call sign chimed out again as the message ended on that peculiar note. He turned to the numbers, but soon realised Connie was using a different cypher. For a moment, recent events with Ros slipped his mind and went to get her opinion. But, then he remembered and swore again. He sat back down and resigned himself to having to decipher Connie's message himself.


	9. Lady Lazarus

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

* * *

**Chapter Nine: Lady Lazarus**

Apologies were never Ros's strong point. At least, not spoken apologies. As an alternative, she pottered about in the small kitchen; brewing up English tea and preparing a stack of grilled cheese sandwiches, with which she intended to cajole Lucas back into a modicum of pliability. Their operation was already complicated enough, without the two of them squabbling over misunderstandings. It always led to them spending more time trying to crack their tangled emotions than any code they were sent. Once her fare was loaded onto a small, stainless steel trolley with ridiculously independently minded wheels, she made the short journey to Lucas's door.

Before knocking, she parked her trolley and pressed her ear against the door. From deep within the room on the other side, she could hear him tapping away at a keyboard, despite the lateness of the hour.

"Lucas," she called out, rapping her knuckles on the wood. "I've made some supper."

The keyboard tapping stopped instantly, followed shortly after by the sound of approaching footsteps. But, when he opened the door, he only went so far as to be able to peep at her through a narrow gap. By the light of the hallway, she could make out the uncompromising scowl on his face, but he at least glanced down at her offerings of peace, quickly cooling on the trolley.

"Quick, or it will get cold," she chivvied him along.

A reluctant smile preceded the door being opened to admit her.

"Thanks, Ros," he said, stepping aside and helping himself to a toastie as she passed.

Quick to move the peace process along, she hauled the trolley over to his small work station and pulled up a spare chair. A piece of paper with a sequence of numbers, lit up under the desk lamp, caught her eye.

"You eat, I'll decrypt this, if you want?" she offered.

He still had his mouth full as he sat beside her at the desk. Gulping it down hurriedly, he shook his head and frowned malignantly at the sheet.

"It came from Connie about an hour ago," he explained, putting down the rest of his sandwich. "I've given up trying to decrypt it. She's using the wrong codes, I think. And it was broadcast on a different station to ours. The frequency was all wrong."

"Then how did you get it?" she asked, picking up the paper and glancing down the list of numbers. "It was probably meant for someone else."

"After our, er, disagreement, I knocked the radio over and it must have pushed the dial up to the next station. It was definitely Connie, though. Some guy replied to her. Whatever the order was, he replied with the phonetic alphabet: 'confirmed'".

Glancing up from the page in her hands, Ros noted that Lucas didn't look too bothered by it. After all, he knew Connie's voice, he knew it was coming from Thames House. Despite his newly raised curiosity, he simply finished off his supper and poured them both strong tea.

She studied the numbers again, noting matching pairs and the jumps in the gaps between their numerical orders. 33. 27. 36. 36. She drew a line under the two thirty-sixes. 45. 54. 12. 15. 54. Again, the same number occurring twice, close together. 36. 63. 9. 3. 57. 42. 45. 54. 60. 24. Nine and then three. Whatever the codes, Ros noted that the letter value of each number was still working in multiples of three. Once again, Ros picked up the pen she found and began rearranging the cypher into a new order.

Meanwhile, Lucas was still talking to her.

"That pen drive we found at the scene," he was telling her, as she only half-listened. "It wasn't Mace's. It must have been one of the men he was with – one of the suspects. A lot of it's in Greek so we'll need it translated. By the way, what did you say that Analyst's name was, again?"

"Huh?" she asked, suddenly looking up. "Do you mean Ruth Evershed, the one Mace framed?"

Lucas's expression darkened again, as he pulled over his laptop for her to see. He clicked on one of the minimised windows along the bottom tool bar, opening it up again. Ros looked at it, the code paper slipping off her lap, instantly forgotten. She leaned in closer, giving him a delicate nudge out of her way, scarcely believing what she was seeing.

"Is that her?" asked Lucas.

There was a picture of Ruth climbing out of a car in front of a nice house; another showed her leaving a hospital in a busy city centre. Underneath, her address was given as a district in Polis, complete with telephone numbers for her home and work.

Ros nodded. "That's her. Hand me your phone, we need to warn her."

There was no time to think of a backstory, to pretend to be anyone other than who she was. God knows what she was going to say to her, but it had to be done. She dialled the number with a trembling hand, then the phone rang and rang until a man's pre-recorded voice sounded on the answering machine. Deciding that the matter was a little too sensitive to be left as a message on a machine, Ros hung up with a muttered curse.

"Do you think we should tell Harry?" asked Lucas, peering at her tentatively.

Ros pondered that for a minute. That house looked nice, if indeed it was Ruth's. Much nicer than anything she had in London. Then, the man's voice on the answering machine, a lover or husband? It couldn't be ruled out, Ruth had been gone long enough.

"No," replied Ros. "If Ruth's built a new life out here, I don't want to be the one to tear it up again. We'll speak with her first; let her make the decision. You keep digging through that memory stick and I'll crack this code."

The shock of Ruth Evershed's sudden appearance had driven the code from her mind, and Ros found herself having to look at it all over again. She had almost memorised the numbers by the time she realised that the cypher had simply been reversed. She took the pen and worked out the value for herself, while Lucas continued searching through the files on the memory stick. She smiled as the first legible word formed itself from the cypher, snuffing out her surge of triumph in the space of a heartbeat. The unbroken sentence formed into four separate words.

Feeling faintly sick, she checked it again. But she knew the result was accurate. To use the wrong numbers and wrong cypher, and still get this result would be a coincidence of the highest order. She folded the result before Lucas could accidentally see it, and tucked it away in her back pocket as she went to get some headspace at the opposite end of the room. Her heart was fluttering, two shocks tailing each other was having the cumulative effect of knocking her clean out of her happy equilibrium.

Lucas, noticing her sudden silence, looked at her from over his shoulder. "Are you alright?"

She forced herself to smile and gave a nod. "Fine. Lucas, how sure are you that this message came from Connie?"

"You don't look fine. You're sort of pale and clammy," he observed, brow creasing. "And yeah, it was definitely Connie. I recognised her voice."

Lucas stopped what he was doing and turned his chair around to face her. She could tell his innate sense of impending bad news was firing on all cylinders. Spinning out the suspense would only make it worse and, besides, she thought he probably had enough of being lied to – even if the silver-tongued liars had his best interests at heart.

"Connie issued a kill order," she explained. "Against you, Lucas."

For a long moment, neither of them said anything. Lucas remained seated, looking back at her as though the information simply hadn't registered. So Ros took the lead.

"Who was that man?" she asked, walking back over to him with a renewed sense of purpose. "Rack your brains for me, who was it? Age? Tone? Anything at all you can remember?"

Lucas's face crumpled, as though he was failing a test. Giving his head a shake, he got up and buried his face in his hands. "I just don't know," he replied, sounding desperate. "He was older. Much older than us. A gruff voice. Not smooth, like Harry's. Real grizzled sounding. It wasn't Mace; I would remember him. He didn't sound like a pompous ass, so not Jools Siviter either-"

He cut himself off, frozen midway between sitting down again when he turned white. For a moment, Ros allowed herself to hope that he had suddenly remembered a vital piece of information that would lead to the big reveal and save the world. But, when he did speak again, it was only to inform her that he was going to vomit. Which he did, not two minutes after bolting from the dormitory and with great gusto.

While he was gone, Ros thought back to their last day on the Grid. Connie virtually smothering Lucas with kindness, when all she wanted was information, wringing him dry like an old flannel and now tossing him casually aside. Their station had been sabotaged from the moment they arrived, and was now worse than useless, it was a liability. Feeling numb with shock, she found herself moving towards the door, out to her own rooms where she had a spare, clean mobile phone that could be ditched after its first use.

* * *

Harry had got as far as putting his coat on and taking one more step, to within touching distance of the pods, before the phone in his office rang. He winced against the noise, feeling his whole body sag in defeat. The Grid was almost empty; only Malcolm remained and he knew he'd say nothing if he decided to just ignore that call. But, as their eyes met across the Grid, Malcolm raised a brow. "Remember Harry, it's for Queen and Country."

"Queen and Country," Harry muttered darkly as he trudged back to his office.

The small hope that the caller had already rung off by the time he declared his name died quickly. But, to salve his wounds, it was Ros, at last.

"Ros, we've not heard from you in days-"

He found himself cut off by a rapid explanation of what had been happening. Mace going missing in suspicious circumstances; opaque clues; then, a kill order issued against Lucas in an intercepted message. By the time Ros drew breath, Harry was almost in a dead faint. His hands shook violently as he knocked on the window to get Malcolm's attention, waving him over. He reached for the nearest chair and almost fell into it.

"Ros, Ros!" he cut in on the conversation. "Slow down, and tell me again, what happened? When did this message arrive?"

As Malcolm entered the Office, Harry jabbed the speaker button so the other man could listen in to the latest turn of events. Malcolm kept his wits about him, scribbling down notes on the nearest pad behind Harry's desk. Times, dates, details of the message and a description of the mystery man's voice.

"I think it goes without saying that we issued no kill order against Lucas," Harry stated. "But we cannot countermand it. You need to get out of there, whoever is acting out the order will already be on their way. Drop everything, grab whatever you need and get to the nearest British Army base."

"And Ros," Malcolm called out, raising his voice so the speaker phone could pick him up. "Take the radio, leave it on the same frequency and record every message you get on it, in case our man tries to get back in touch with Connie."

Ros confirmed the order and relayed it to Lucas, who they could just hear in the distant background.

"Harry, apprehend Connie immediately. You know I know why," she said.

Malcolm was already on his feet and out of the door; they would have her brought in immediately. With Malcolm gone, Harry jabbed again at the speaker button, making their conversation private once more.

"Ros, tell Lucas I'm arranging for you both to be on the first possible flight home-"

"Wait! Before you do that, there's something else I need you to know. But first, tell me honestly, why is Connie issuing a kill order against Lucas?" she asked, brisk and business like once more. "Is it to do with Sugar Horse?"

Harry gripped the telephone receiver in one hand, knuckles whitening as he tried to stop his trembling. With his free hand, he kneaded the bridge of his nose, dispelling the tension gathering fast. His thoughts were in a melee, in which each fought the other in a joust to the death.

"Ros, please understand, I can't tell you what Sugar Horse is over the phone," he eventually said. "But, it is real. It has been compromised. I think we might have found the leak."

Even admitting it aloud didn't make it seem real, to him. He had seen more than one worm turn, before. But nothing could ever quite prepare a man for the next betrayal; once you trusted someone, the barriers were gone and the soul was exposed. The very nature of trust meant that there was no protection from the betrayal that followed. He couldn't dwell on Connie's apparent betrayal, or delay his acceptance of the barren facts. All he could do was act before the lives of two of his most highly valued agents were placed in any further danger. The time for maudlin lamentation would come later.

On the other end of the line, he heard Ros taking a deep breath, calming herself down.

"I need to speak to Lucas," he said.

"Sure," she replied.

A muffled crackling sounded over the line as the phone changed hands; seconds later, a tremulous sounding Lucas greeted him.

"I know it was her, Harry," he said, jumping ahead in a conversation he clearly expected to turn against him.

"She's the only one who's been manning the radio, Lucas," he answered. "There's no one else it could have been."

"Oh!" he sounded pleasantly surprised.

It saddened Harry that he had clearly expected to be disbelieved, or doubted. A fact made worse by what he needed to ask Lucas to do next.

"Is there anything else at all you can remember from the Sugar Horse interrogations?" he asked. "I know it's a big ask, Lucas. But I need you to go back there, to try to remember any small detail, even if it seems insignificant. Call me, regardless of time, the moment anything comes back to you."

His request, met with silence, even made him feel sick. So soon after his return, Lucas was being asked to relive unimaginable torture, all without even a debriefing for emotional backup.

"You know what they were doing to me at the time," Lucas said, his tone once again subdued. Then he sighed, resigning himself to what must be done. "But I'll do it, Harry."

"If you do this, we can close this case for good and you can move on," Harry explained, putting the best possible spin on things. "Now, you need to get out of there. But, before you leave, set up a motion detector on a security camera and leave it running. Malcolm will conduct surveillance from here. We need to get a look at your would-be assassins."

"Sure. I'd love to get a look at my fan club too, as it happens," he replied, managing to inject a little humour into proceedings. The first sign he was recovering his equilibrium. "See you, Harry."

Harry was about to hang up, when Ros's voice snapped him back to attention. The shock of Connie's betrayal had made him forget that she had yet more merry tidings for him.

"Harry, I wasn't going to say anything, but there's something you need to know before you make any decisions about extracting us," she said.

Harry leaned back in his chair, as close to lying down as he could get. If this night got any worse, he wanted to be in the most comfortable position possible for the heart attack that might well follow.

"Just tell me, Ros. Rip off the band aid."

"We recovered a memory stick from the scene of Mace's abduction," she explained. "On it, we found pictures of Ruth. She's here, Harry. We think they're going after her, next."

Stunned, Harry's heart palpitated painfully in his chest. He caught his emotional free-fall just before it plunged off a cliff-edge. Now that the situation had turned personal, his cold stoicism rebuilt itself with renewed fortification as the storm whipped up around it.

"Where is she, Ros? Have you spoken to her? I need to know."

"I've been calling her home number, down in Polis, but there's no answer," Ros replied. "She works in a Hospital, so I called them on the off-chance that she's working a night shift. They can't tell me anything, it's confidential."

"Right, first get yourselves to safety for the rest of the night," he instructed. "First thing tomorrow, leave for Polis and make sure Ruth is aware of the situation…" his voice trailed off for a minute. "If you see her, tell her…" again, he faltered.

He remembered what she said to him the last time they saw each other: "leave it as something that was never said. Something wonderful, that was never said." He found that, even now, he couldn't break his oft-unspoken word to her. Nor was this the time to dwell on what might have been, now was the time to make sure she was safe from the past.

"Harry," Ros's voice was uncharacteristically soft on the other end of the phone. "We won't let anything bad happen to her. You have my word."

"Thank you, Ros," he replied. "Let me know when you've seen her."

He hung up the phone and let his mind drift for a minute, back down the Thames when he saw her last. The memory rears up from the back of his mind, that same place where all the painful, tangled affairs of the heart were kept in permanent lock down. But even in the emotional fog, logic rears its pretty little head. It was too coincidental. Ruth was the reason behind the Op, and the Op had led him back to her. He almost reached for the flight schedules, before he remembered Connie. And now, thinking logically, he sensed that someone, somewhere, was being led into a trap.

* * *

Ruth paused in the driveway of the house she shared with George, and turned to wave goodbye to their friend. The lift home had spared her a second long journey by bus, followed by a hike up a steep hill. It was already late, the hue of the skies deepening to indigo as the day drew to a close. She picked up her bag as soon as the car vanished down the lip of the hill, and made for the front door. After digging her keys out of her handbag, she unlocked the door and almost fell over the threshold. However, the flashing light on her answer machine drew her attention and she went to get the good news.

"You have twenty-three missed calls," a woman's synthetic voice informed her. "Message one, today at 20.00 hours."

All those missed calls in four hours? Ruth frowned at the machine as the message began. Two seconds of silence before the caller realised the machine had kicked in, a female cursing quietly in the background before terminating the call. There followed another twenty-two dead calls. After the last message played out in silence, she remained frozen in the doorway, looking at the answer machine as though it might explode.

After another minute had elapsed, the living room caught her eye. The hard drive had been removed from her computer, the slot in the tower was empty with the Ide cable left hanging out. Whoever had been here hadn't even tried to cover their tracks, or make it look like an authentic burglary. She set down her handbag and left her travel bag by the door, in case she needed to make a run for it sometime in the next few minutes. She also had another bag, packed with emergency supplies that she kept under her bed at all times, so she made her way into the bedroom to fetch it. While there, she used the stump of an old eyeliner pencil to leave an emergency note to George:

"_If I'm not here when you get back, call this number and say it's about Lady Lazarus."_

She left the note, along with the number, in his empty sock-drawer, rolled up inside one of her own stockings. It would catch his eye in there, and he would look at it. Or, so she hoped. There was nothing missing in the bedroom. Any doubts she had about this being a normal robbery were banished by the presence of several items of jewellery, untouched and on open display on the dresser. Nervously, she crossed the room to the window and twitched the closed curtains apart. If the house was being watched, they would already know she was in, but her twinging fear wouldn't permit her to abandon basic caution and switch on any lights.

Outside, down the hill and partially obscured by trees, she could make out the roof of a car glinting in the moonlight. But, it could easily belong to a neighbour. She couldn't make out the model, and there was no one in sight. With nothing to see, she reached under her bed and got the bag she came for. She had kept it with her ever since she went on the run, in case of emergencies like this one.

As she reached the hallway, she heard the lock picks in the door and froze. Her heart beat raced as the door clicked open and footsteps, tapping softly on the lino in the hall. She swallowed hard and stepped silently into the bathroom. The window was much too small to climb through and there was nothing in there that would even pass for a weapon, beside the toilet brush. Even that would only work if her intruder just happened to have a pathological fear of germs. It was worth a try. She picked it up, extricating it silently from its plastic stand and holding it out in front of her like a sword, she advanced slowly on the living room.

She should have guessed that Mace had found her; that he was hiding out in Polis, biding his time until she returned. She paused at the corner, where the passage way between the bedrooms crossed onto the hallway. Straining her ear, she could hear one man just feet away. Mace. She drew a deep breath, blanked her mind and stepped out.

"Hold it right there and back the fuck off!" she yelled with as much force as she could muster, brandishing the toilet brush as boldly as any other Spook would brandish a loaded gun.

She fell silent as the man approached her, a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. "Hello, Ruth. Were you expecting somebody else? Oliver Mace, perhaps?" He chuckled, amused at his own deception.

She was the one who backed away; slow, cautious backwards steps until she hit the rear wall of the house. Her expression froze in a deep frown, her jaw almost hitting her chin. All the while, as casually as he liked, he followed her, in no hurry at all.

"But-but-" she stammered, her head spinning as furiously as a child's top. "I don't-"

The smirk got wider, revealing a neat row of nicotine stained teeth. "I know, I know, it's confusing. But all will be explained, Ruth. I promise. Put the dirty bog brush down and come with me."

A surge of indignation swept up inside her. "I'm not bloody well going anywhere with you-"

She got no further as a rag was pressed to her mouth, covering her nostrils and the over-powering sweetness of chloroform pulled her under a deep, black tide.


	10. An Act of Truth

**Author's Note:** thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed this story, it means a lot. The usual disclaimers apply: I own none of this. Thanks again for reading and reviews would be most welcome.

* * *

**Chapter Ten: An Act of Truth**

The warm, placid darkness of the Grid lulled Harry Pearce into a semblance of relaxation. It was one of those rare moments in which every piece of machinery had fallen silent; energy saving lights had automatically dipped as low as they could go and the phones remained dormant in the dead of night. In his office, he breathed in the pungent steam of the strong coffee as he sipped tentatively, wincing against the bitter taste. It was approaching one am and he needed his wits about him; any minute now, and this new found tranquillity would be shattered like a bombed out side-street.

Before the inevitable happened, he awarded himself with the luxury of five minutes. Five minutes during which he could enjoy the solitude and remember. Accordingly, he turned to his computer screen and clicked through the relevant files. Ruth's image appeared on the screen. The word "DECEASED" in large red letters, emblazoned over the top of her file. When she first went, he hated seeing the word: like the insinuation of death was enough to make it real. Then there were the nights when he tormented himself with the knowledge that Ruth could be dead, and he would never know about it. Now he had the truth and it felt like a physical object that he ought to be doing something with.

For a long moment, it was just he and Ruth. Briefly, he glanced up from the screen to where her desk once stood on the Grid. He thought of all the times he would glance up and see her looking back, her smile, the way her hair framed her face. Lost in his thoughts, he blinked away the nostalgia as an altogether different, much more real face suddenly blocked his view. He hadn't even heard the whoosh of the pods.

"God, Harry, has world war three just been declared, or something?"

Jo Portman now sagged against his doorframe, large eyes glazed and dull, still in the grip of the sleep she had clearly been dragged from. Close on her heels, Ben Kaplan stumbled like a drunk through the pods, walking bodily into a coat stand with a muttered curse.

Harry tried to look apologetic.

"Get coffee," he said. "You're both going to need it."

Jo nodded before swaying off towards the kitchen. The time had come. He shut down his computer, and made for the meeting room. In the hour since Malcolm had left, he had gathered what information he could and prepared some form of presentation which he set up while Jo and Ben reclaimed their consciousness. They emerged from the kitchen ten minutes later, both looking to him for the reason behind their emergency recall.

"Sit down, both of you," he said, gesturing towards the neat rows of chairs either side of the table. "I have some bad news for you both."

They exchanged a dark look as they took their usual seats at the far end of the table. Harry switched on the screen, showing an image of Connie James. Jo's eyes widened. "Harry, has something happened to Connie?" She asked.

Conversations like these were never easy, but this had a unique difficulty about it. Connie was a woman he had trusted with his life. Jo and Ben were relatively new recruits, who had never been through a betrayal like this, before. Harry loosened his tie, a nervous habit of his as the going got choppy and he felt like he was struggling to breathe.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this, but Connie is a double agent," he explained.

Ben choked on his coffee, while Jo's expression hardened in disbelief.

"She can't be!" she began, but words failed her.

"Earlier this evening, a message was intercepted in which she issued a kill order against another agent from Section D," he pressed on.

"Who? Why?" Ben asked, suddenly wide awake.

Harry pulled out the chair at the head of the table and sat down. "What I'm about to tell you exceeds both your clearance levels," he explained, deciding that they both needed and deserved the truth. "While Lucas North was incarcerated, he was tortured for information about a ring of assets with the codename Sugarhorse. These Assets are at the very highest levels of Government in Russia. The very fact that the Russian's new of the existence of Sugarhorse meant that we had a leak. Now, we have no direct, physical evidence that Connie is the mole, beside the kill order she issued against Lucas North. But the only reason she could possibly have to want to silence him, is because of Sugarhorse."

"Connie, working for the Russians!" Jo retorted, still baffled and confused.

Harry shrugged. "She was always over-compensating for something," he remarked. "But I need you both to go to the paper archive and check out these assets and these people in the know. All them; with a fine tooth comb. I know it's late, but I am sure you both understand the urgency of this."

The names flashed up on the screen while Ben and Jo committed them to memory. Harry hoped that having two minds working on the case, they could halve the time it took to get the hard evidence they needed to convict Connie for treason. The sad fact remained: all they had was the word of Lucas North, a traumatised man fresh from an eight year stint in a hellish prison. Everything now depended on him remembering some vital piece of information, something that would throw enough light on the whole case for everything else to fall into place.

"Where is Connie now?" asked Ben. "What will happen to her?"

"Malcolm has gone with some Officers to bring her in," Harry answered. "Nothing will happen, unless we get that evidence."

To show their understanding, they took their coffee and left. Once again alone, all he could do was wait. His main hope was that Connie would be a similar state to the others, exhausted and half-asleep, and possibly more malleable. But then, he also knew it was Connie he was dealing with. Harry checked the time again, it was coming on for two am and finally, the pods went off again, soon followed by the sound of Connie's voice, mid-flow.

"…when this misunderstanding has been cleared, I assure you I will be tending my resignation. No, really Malcolm, I expected better of you. Harry is paranoid, I expected no better of him, but you, Malcolm…"

Her voice grew louder, sharper, as she stormed across the Grid with Malcolm and some unfortunate Officers trailing in her slipstream. Harry blanked it out as best he could, making his way toward the interview suite. Given the lateness of the hour, he wanted this interrogation over and done with. But, with Connie at least in their protective custody, her betrayal had been caught in time. As he passed her on the Grid, he refused to look away. He met her gaze and held it.

"Harry!" she snapped at him, jowls aquiver in anger. ""Explain yourself, now. Explain this!"

"Come with us, and I'm sure all will become clear in time," he curtly replied, then turned and led the way to the interview room.

Malcolm and Harry sat side by side at the table situated in the centre of the room. Connie sat opposite them, still with her hairnet on. It detracted somewhat from the volcanic fury in her expression. Her pale blue eyes flickered between them both.

"You know me," she said, keeping her tone in check. "You know what I have done for this country, in all my years of service."

"We also know that you issued a kill order against another Officer," Harry added. "Why?"

"You have proof of this? A recording, perhaps?"

The honest answer was 'no'. They only had Lucas's word, backed up by the support of Ros. But, Harry was keen to gloss over that particular point.

"Connie, in respect of your long service, I thought we could spare you the humiliation of having your dirty linens aired quite so publicly," he reasoned. "Just tell us: what is going on? End this now."

Connie smiled knowingly. She knew them as well as they knew her. "That's a no then, is it?"

* * *

By the time Lucas and Ros got settled at the barracks, it was close to four in the morning. Personnel was kept to a minimum, so they found themselves alone together again, but sharing a dormitory. The same Alsation that welcomed them upon their arrival now sniffed at Lucas's hastily packed bag, while Ros tried to get some sleep. It was almost too dark to see, so Lucas lay back on his bunk and looked up towards the ceiling. He extended his hand over the edge of the bed, where he soon felt the wet nose of the dog snuffling at his fingers.

With the reassuring presence of the dog, he let his mind wander back to the Sugarhorse interrogations. He remembered as if it were yesterday, the waterboarding, the beatings and the smell of disinfectant hanging stagnant in the air. He shut his eyes, gripping the dog's fur, as he relived the experience, minute by minute. While his heart rate soared, he kept his breathing steady against the onslaught of his own terrors. Then, out of the blue, a memory from an altogether different time cut across his mind. Sitting up with a jolt he rolled off the bed and shook Ros awake.

"Ros!" he whispered. "Wake up!"

She hadn't been sleeping properly, just drifting off and she looked up at him alert enough.

"Is it Sugarhorse?" she asked.

"No," he replied. "Remember I said there was an English woman in Mace's hotel room?"

Ros sat up and nodded.

"It was Ruth Evershed," he added. "It was definitely her. I only just remembered."

Ros frowned, trying to make sense of it.

"She cannot possibly be working with Mace; he thinks she's dead, and he's responsible for it," she explained, trying to wring some sense out of the situation. "What the hell is she playing at now?"

After just one, fleeting, encounter with Ruth, Lucas could shed no further light on the question.

"Maybe she found out he was here and wanted to do some digging?" he suggested, feeling it was stating the obvious.

"She's been here for years, as well," Ros mused aloud. "He's only been here for a few weeks. But how did she find out? Unless she's checking who comes in and out of the country."

"It's easy enough to do," he put in. "Do you think we should tell Harry?"

Ros shook her head. "No, he'll be in with Connie and he needs to stay completely focused on that," she replied. "But if you remember anything at all about Sugarhorse, then that he will need to know."

She looked at him expectantly, her eyes boring into him in a way that made him feel almost uncomfortable. It felt like he was under a microscope. He swallowed, feeling like he was going to be sick again. In desperation, he clung to the only other recollection he had.

"There is something," he said. "When they thought I was knocked out, I heard them talking about something called Pilgrim. I remember it now. I think it could have been the codename of an Asset they had."

Ros allowed herself a hopeful smile. "It's worth a try," she replied, reaching for her phone. "Stay there, Harry may want a word with you. But remember, say nothing about Ruth."

Still fully clothed, she got up and dialled the number, taking the phone outside in the passageway. Lucas sat back down at his own bunk, listening to the muffled sound of her voice as she relayed the information during the brief call. The dog had fallen asleep, and he decided to try and follow suit before dawn rose and they had to go chasing down old spooks.

* * *

The effects of the chloroform wore off slowly. While she regained consciousness, Ruth felt as though she was swimming through a deep pool of treacle. She was hot, barely able to breathe and, when she did, it was as though her body was filling with thick fluid. When was eventually able to open her eyes, she could barely see anything but for a thin sliver of light emanating from under a door. After a few minutes, she was able to identify a loud humming as the sound of an engine running. Bumps in the road, which jolted her violently at regular intervals, confirmed her suspicion that was being taken far from Polis.

As she recalled the last few minutes of her life prior to blacking out, nausea washed over her as her mouth watered. She steadied herself against the wall of the transit van she was in and wretched. Spitting out the acrid residue, she retreated as far to the back of the van as possible, leaning against the back wall of the cabin to try and minimise the jolting. Once there, she let herself droop as the last side-effects of chloroform wore off slowly. Making any escape in her current condition would be suicide.

With no windows, it was impossible to gage the speed the driver was going at, or the direction. Nor could she even guess at how long they had travelling for. The only indication was the light under the door. It was daylight, and that was all she could tell. It was near midnight when she was taken; the sun rose at six am. When she felt strong enough, she sat up again and made a note of the directions the van was turning in. Regular sharp turns on rough, unkempt roads. Side streets and back routes, by the feel of it. The speed was regular, fast and steady. The driver wasn't slowing even for sharp turns, so they were clearly in a hurry.

Finally, after an indeterminate period of time, the van skidded to a halt. Ruth held her breath as footsteps approached round the side of the van and the handles turned. A sudden rush of broad daylight filled the van, burning her eyes and making her recoil. At least the fresh air cleared the smell of sick that had built up in the cabin. For a long moment, her captor regarded her coolly, hands on hips.

As soon as her eyes became adjusted to the bright light, she looked back at him at a loss for what to say. The only plan she had was to fight him off with all her power if he got any funny ideas about assaulting her. All the while, he stood there smiling at her.

"Don't worry, Ruth, I'm not going to hurt you," he said.

She didn't feel terribly assured by his promise.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, the words thick and clumsy on her drugged tongue. "Who are you?"

She remembered him, but only vaguely. He used to follow the Home Secretary around and once tried to usurp the power of MI5. But the details escaped her at this crucial time. Now, he reached inside the van and pulled her out of the van. Surprisingly gently, he helped her to stand. Now outside, she could see where she was, quite able to get a good look around. With growing fear, she took in the derelict hotels, the crumbling tourist attractions and forgotten theatre. The pavements were cracked, the asphalt on the roads broken up where nature reclaimed the streets of Famagusta, Europe's largest ghost town.

"I don't want anything from you, Ruth," he said, tying her hands behind her back – something she was powerless to resist while the chloroform was still affecting her. "It's who you can bring to me."

Ruth laughed. "You were friends with Mace, weren't you?" she said, putting up feeble resistance as he began marching her towards an abandoned hotel on the opposite side of the street. "Do you think Harry Pearce is going to come and rescue me? Is that what this is about? You and Mace are trying to trap him. I know what you're doing."

The man stopped abruptly and pulled on the bindings at her wrists. Pain shot through the length of her arm, making her yelp. The man had pulled her so close to him, that she could feel the breath against her neck. "You know nothing," he hissed in her ear. "Now move!"

Going by the tone of his voice, Ruth guessed that her abductor was no longer friends with Mace. But, she knew him and she was racking her brains, trying to get the name. All the while, he's pushing her through the doors of a hotel. Inside, the tables were still set for lunch, underneath a heavy shroud of cobwebs. When the invasion happened, there wasn't even enough time to loot the place properly.

"If the Turks find you here," she panted, breathless from being pushed up a flight of stairs. "They will shoot you without question!"

"Well, that's a chance I'm just going to have to take now, isn't it?"

It was a statement rather than a question, so Ruth let the rest of the journey pass in silence. He took her as high up the hotel's floors as he could go, before the stairs were blocked by fallen masonry that had crashed through the uppermost floors during the war. Going in her favour, was the small fact that there must be a hundred and one ways to escape from a place like this. Finally, he stopped outside a barricaded door and he sat her down while he let himself in.

"Friends reunited," the man said as he hauled her up again, and gave her shove into the old hotel room.

Ruth fell flat on her face. But, before she could do anything, the door slammed shut behind her and she listened in despair as the barricades were replaced. The sound of her abductor's footsteps soon receded down the passageway outside, leaving her utterly alone. Or, so she initially thought, as she struggled to get to her feet.

"Ruth Evershed."

A familiar voice called her name from a partitioned room adjacent to the one she was in. She whirled round, to find Oliver Mace peering at her through a small gap between the ceiling and the partition. He had two black eyes, one so bad it had almost completely closed over. A cut over his left eye had been left open and dirty, the surrounding area of skin purple and swollen. He was obviously standing on something to be able to see over the top of the partition, but he still gripped the top of it to steady himself. Even his hands looked as though they had been stamped on. His condition was so pitiful, she almost felt sorry for him. But, moments after that brief flicker of sympathy, a wave of molten anger took light as she rounded on him.

"For all the things you've done," she spat at him. "For everything you've done to me, you bloody well explain to me what's going on, right now!"

Mace sagged against the partition, tried to smile but only succeeded in showing off his now missing teeth. "He doesn't want you-"

"What does he want?" she cut over him. "Why am I here? Why are you here?"

Slowly, he shook his head. "It was a trap," he said. "He set it all up-"

"Just answer the fucking question, you bastard!"

"He wants me and he wants Harry Pearce," he finally answered, his words slow and cumbersome through a swollen mouth. "You remember the Tom Quinn debacle, years ago, he tried to bring down Harry Pearce and I pretended to help him. Once Tom's name was cleared, Harry and I humiliated him."

The story sounded familiar. She remembered Harry telling her, gleefully, about how he and Mace had had the man ejected from a Gentleman's Club. Then, the name came back to her.

"Jason Belling?" she asked, eyes narrowed as she cast her mind back.

But Mace hadn't finished. He renewed his grip on the partition, hoisting himself as high as he could, while Ruth settled against the bed.

"Eight months ago, he tried again," he continued. "He tried to wipe out the whole of Section D, but Harry and Connie James were on to him, right from the start. They sent Adam Carter round there to try and knock some sense into him, but it was too late-"

"Wait, Oliver. How could Belling do all this?" she asked. "Is Harry alright?"

"I haven't seen Harry for two years," he replied. "But I hear about him. I don't know all the details, but Belling came close to getting them all killed by some IRA sniper who was doing the rounds."

The whole story was making Ruth even more befuddled. She blinked through the fog of confusion that was rapidly building up, and decided not to question it any further. Instead, she sorted out the information she already had.

"So, this is merely Belling's latest, elaborate attempt to get revenge on you and Harry?"

Mace gave another painful nod. "When Belling found out that you were here," he explained. "He worked on the Turkish Intelligence Agency and encouraged them to invite me over here to discuss security issues and Turkey's EU membership application. At the same time, he told Golden Dawn that you were here and I was here to secretly work with you. When I went for talks with Golden Dawn, they lured me into a trap and now we're here."

Ruth listened, fixing her old nemesis with a steely look. "Why were you even talking to Golden Dawn?"

He laughed drily. "It was supposed to be a set up," he answered. "I was offering them intelligence at a price, maybe arms. We were trying to get several members of the organisation neutralised."

"And it would be just like you to use dirty tricks to get it done," she bitterly pointed out.

He looked at her as though he was about to say something about Acts of Truth and the set up. But, evidently, he changed his mind again and dropped his gaze. She could tell they were both thinking the same thing and it was pointless to pursue it any further. Not when they had so much else going on.

"So what's next?" she asked. "Has Belling gone to make sure Harry finds out that I'm here in the hope he'll drop everything to rescue me?"

"Belling already made sure that Harry found out about my trip to Cyprus by planting information on his counterpart in Six," Mace explained. "He could already have found out about you being here, even if Six weren't privy to that particular gem of information."

Ruth sagged, groaning aloud. She was being used as bait in a trap that, anything short of a national emergency back in England, she knew Harry would walk straight into. 'No heroics' was the phrase he used only in relation to other people. Behind her, Oliver Mace carried on mumbling about the set up and cursing Jason Belling. Ruth, however, absorbed the latest body blow and let her mind race, thinking of ways to get them both out before Belling could lose the plot completely.

* * *

After a few hours sleep, Harry woke up slumped across his desk and a file placed neatly beside his head. He looked at it for a moment. The word "Pilgrim" written in red Cyrillic text. On the front, Jo had stuck a post-it note, on which she had written: "brace yourself." He sighed deeply as he slid it over the desk, towards him. Surely, he thought, it cannot possibly get any worse.

But then, as it so often does, it did get worse. He opened the file to find the name of the leak, the man handling Connie James. His old mentor, Bernard Qualtrough. Inside, was an old black and white photograph of Qualtrough and Connie, in black and white, taken at least twenty-five years previously. Harry closed his eyes and buried his face in his hands. Qualtrough had taught him everything he knew and now, he too, was nothing more than a traitor to his country.

Once he had recovered himself, Harry progressed through the file. It had been secreted from inside the Russian Embassy courtesy of one of Ben's assets, something Harry made a note to remember when pay reviews came round. As he progressed through the file, he uncovered Qualtrough's plans to frame him, such detail that made him want to vomit. But, more importantly, enough to make him set aside his own personal feelings of betrayal, was the evidence they needed against Connie.

He swept up the file and returned to the interview room.


End file.
